The FCC Between These Thighs

By Lara Riscol, AlterNet. Posted June 5, 2001.

WARNING: This column is for thinking adults and is meant to offend.

The only thing that was on my mind
Was just shoving my dick up this bitch's behind
I looked at the girl and said
Babe, your ass ain't nothing but a base hit
I'm going to have to get rid of your ass, yeah
'Cause you're on my dick, dick, ding-a-ling

You might not be surprised that the Federal Communications Commission used these lyrics from Hi-C's "I'm Not Your Puppet" as an example in its recently released enforcement policy of broadcast indecency. The FCC issued the radio and TV guidelines of indecent/not indecent seven years after announcing it would and 27 years after the Supreme Court confirmed its authority to do so.

But I was astounded to learn that the FCC has fined community radio KBOO-FM in Portland, Oregon, for playing Sarah Jones' "Your Revolution" during its rap and hip hop program. On advice of its lawyers, KBOO suspended Urban Music Director and unpaid volunteer Deena Barnwell, who spun the profanity-free, critically lauded social commentary.

What was in the song that caused such uproar? Soft and slow, poet/actor/singer Jones repeats, "Your revolution will not happen between these thighs" in a contemporary turn on the classic civil rights poem, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

Jones sings what screams silent from MTV videos; that "The real revolution ain't about bootie size, the Versaces you buys, or the Lexus you drives." She skims the abstinence-only theme with, "Your revolution ain't gonna knock me up without no ring" and "Your revolution will not be you sending me for no drip drip V.D. shot."

And then she gets sexy with feminist sass:

You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of
French vanilla, butter pecan, chocolate deluxe
Or having Akinyele's dream, um hum
A six foot blow job machine, um hum
You wanna subjugate your Queen, uh-huh
Think I'm gonna put it in my mouth just because you
Made a few bucks?
Please brother please

The 26-year-old artist recalls the song's genesis. At a Puffy-promoted party, "I was standing there like some video ho, singing along to 'bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks.' And I thought, Something has gone awry. This is not me, you know, I disagree!"

But when she stepped up to counter the erosive commercial norm with "Your Revolution," the FCC declared her work to offend the community norm. In its order forcing KBOO to fork over $7000, the FCC maintained that "The rap song 'Your Revolution' contains unmistakable patently offensive sexual references ... the sexual references appear to be designed to pander and shock."

To determine what's offensive, the FCC concentrates on the depiction of "sexual or excretory organs or activities" and its "risk to children." But why the focus on sex and shit? And must offensive, as in unpleasant and insulting, necessarily be a bad thing for kids and the community when it rattles through the numbing blather elsewhere in broadcast land? And who are these people who decide?

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