Beyonce: Role Model for Sasha and Malia?
Given the information that I read a couple of hours ago on more than one website, including this one, I am forced to conclude that Michelle Obama would have little qualm with her beautiful daughters Sasha and Malia growing up to be sluts or streetwalkers, or at the very least people who celebrate and heartily encourage such behavior. I’m not sure how any different conclusion could be reached from her actions.
I refer to Ms. Obama’s congratulatory tweet on the occasion of Beyonce’s 33rd birthday yesterday. I shall reproduce that correspondence in full (not a difficult task, given that the limit is 160 characters): “Happy birthday, @Beyonce! You’re an incredible role model, a phenomenal mother, and a wonderful friend. Hope you have an amazing day! –mo”.
Well, isn’t that special…
Now I will confess to knowing essentially nothing of Beyonce beyond her name and the fact that she is a huge star. I can honestly say that if my life depended upon a task as relatively simple as naming one of her songs, I might not still be among the living, although with a modicum of research, I did recognize the name “All the Single Ladies” (though neither the preceding nor following words to the song are included in the repertoire of my understanding). And while I knew that pop culture had coarsened considerably, and that such coarsening would no doubt be reflected in the lyrics of many of today’s thug/“musicians”, I still found myself surprised. Chalk it up to a combination of my age, musical tastes, and naivete, but I was not prepared to read the lyrics to the multiple Beyonce songs posted on this website. I suppose that I had (naively, to say the least) assumed that such utterly vile lyrics were reserved, at least for the most part, for singers somewhere on the fringe of the mainstream (I mean, I knew that Snoop Puppy Poop and his “songs” were horrid); from what very little I can tell, Beyonce seems to have a following that is fairly widespread.
Which, after reading these lyrics which I will neither reproduce nor even link to because of their scummy nature, scares me to death.
Because here is the deal: if Ms. Obama considers a person Beyonce to be a “role model”, then it stands to reason that she’d have little problem if her girls grew up to be like her, to sing similar songs, to emulate her lifestyle, to live out what her songs encourage. And there was a time not that long ago when we’d not celebrate a person who engaged in the behavior in which Beyonce revels. Not that long ago, we’d call that person a tramp or a hooker (depending on whether or not money exchanged hands, a distinction absent a moral difference). Ergo, my assertion that apparently Ms. Obama would be fine with Sasha and Malia growing up to be sluts or streetwalkers.
And I’m not sure that it’s much of a stretch to suggest that if you want a tidy little microcosm of why our society is headed to hell in a handbasket, it might be that people of such supposed standing as our First Lady would find in such a lowlife as Beyonce an “incredible role model”.