The New News Gazette and Times Clarion

By Charles Nounou, editor

Fearing that gangsta rap will turn local Wizard of Oz fans into Kool G Rap fanz and divert them from looking somewhere over the rainbow to looking somewhere behind the toilet tank, a Kanzaz legislator haz introduced a rezolution to condemn the popular muzic form.

Enough z talk. With a state minimum wage of $2.65 per hour and a battle over the building of a coal-fired power plant near Holcomb (where the crime described in In Cold Blood occurred) to serve Colorado and pollute the sunflower state, the lawmakers will instead take on that more urgent issue, the American culture and how to keep it the hell out of Kansas.

You will recall that Kansas is the state that has already condemned the teaching of evolution while it promotes the image of Kansas as Oz. The point is to keep knowledge that doesn’t belong in Kansas out.

So far it has worked. When a Kansan says “damn,” she will always use it in a sentence such as, “We went to visit the Boulder Damn near Las Vegas.” But since references to such foreign places would still be lost on many a Kansan, even if made more correct by substituting “Hoover Damn,” he is more likely to say, “I went fishing on the Kansas River Damn.”

When a Kansan says, “bitch,” he will invariably be referring to a dog and a hunting dog at that. Thus he will be confused and upset when someone at a political rally asks John McCain about Hillary Clinton, “How can we beat the bitch?”

When he says “ho,” he is either referring to Santa Claus or his garden, depending on the season.

The bill sponsor is Rep. Peggy Mast of Emporia. She opposes rap because she says it “demeans women and promotes violence.” “It’s just that we can send a message that this is not something that Kansas approves of or welcomes,” she said. Her exhaustive knowledge of rap comes from a Topeka activist who actually claims to be a fan of 50 Cent. How her position on rap equates to that of “Kansas” wasn’t clear, but it is possible that “Kansas” is a Topeka group dedicated to the perpetuation of barn dancing and Lawrence Welk reruns.

It is also unclear why Rep. Mast left out homophobia,  promiscuity, pimpin’ and hustlin’, drug use, racism, and materialism as features of gangsta rap.

She also failed to mention how it describes the life of Topeka’s inner city and what the First Amendment might have to say about the whole matter.

As Topeka’s sole rapper, Son Flower, asked, “Didn’t Tipper Gore already do this?”