COMMENTARY The controversy over the invitation of a gangsta rapper named Common to a White House "poetry evening" continues to roil, with right and left taking sides, according to the Daily Caller. At least one police union has expressed outrage.
As previously reported in Associated Content, first lady Michelle Obama has invited the notorious rap artist to the White House despite the fact he has composed verses about the joys of killing police officers and even of setting former President George W. Bush on fire. Also, with a kind of strange irony, Common has also inveighed against interracial relationships such as the one that produced the president of the United States 50 years ago.
The Obamas apparently met Common at the Chicago church where the controversial Jeremiah Wright preached. Wright's fiery sermons in which he cursed the United States and suggested it had brought the 9/11 attacks on itself enlivened cable news and talk radio during the 2008 campaign. Then-candidate Obama claimed not to have remembered those sermons.
The spectacle of a gangsta rapper may have some consequences for the 2012 election. While the Daily Caller speculates that inviting Common to the White House may have the effect of shoring up the president's support among blacks, at least one public sector police union is not amused.
NBC News is reporting the union representing the New Jersey state police has expressed outrage over the Common invitation. At issue is a song Common composed celebrating Assata Shakur, convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.
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Michelle Obama seems to have not factored in her invitation of her friend Common the possibility that police officers, and the unions that represent them, take the celebration of cop killers rather personally. If the impression takes hold that the Obamas are overly tolerant of that sort of thing, the effects on the re-election chances of the president could be devastating.
In 1988, then-Vice President George H. W. Bush racked up an impressive number of endorsements from police unions due to the impression his opponent, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, had given of having a casual attitude toward law enforcement. The Obamas are risking an even more devastating series of images, of the eventual Republican candidate being endorsed by men and women in blue while denouncing gangsta rappers who celebrate killing cops.
Another irony is that, in the wake of the controversy in Wisconsin, public sector unions appeared to be firmly in the president's corner in the run up to 2012. As far as police go, that may no longer be the case.
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