Not sure if somebody posted this but somebody released a snippet of a never before seen 1993 debate between Tupac Shakur and David Vincent about Hip Hop lyrics and Police brutality in some show called "The Jane Pratt Show"

David of course was in team cop before switching sides and writting "Radikult" lol.



*p.s. thanks Defenestrated

I find these talk show "interviews" headache inducing, mainly because the hosts have about four working brain cells among them, and the audience has even less.

You have the tags right ([youtube]URL[/youtube]). Just copy the URL from your browser instead of using YT's "share" button.

So, this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkX5KbWy14k
...instead of this - https://youtu.be/LkX5KbWy14k

Thanks mane

Imagine running a network with these limitations. When I was in high school, we read a study that newspapers were purposely written at around a 6th grade level. And now we have loose nut dipshits like Mothers for Liberty affecting the foundations.

How weird! Anyway, always glad to seeTupac being Tupac - which was, pretty much always spitting facts. David Vincent doesn't say a lot (his face drips disapproval) but I'm also not surprised that would be his stance. This was a time when hip hop was getting a ton of backlash for "violent" imagery, not just from the misguided moralist hypocrites but from other genre artists as well.

Haha wow. Definitely siding with Tupac on this one

All I want to know is how you write songs with lyrics like "GHOULS, ATTACK THE CHURCH, CRUSH THE HOLY PRIEST" and then get mad that rap artists aren't sufficiently deferential to the fucking police. David Vincent is a clown lol

Sure, these outrageous lyrics may encourage ghouls to kill priests. The perfect equivalent of encouraging people to kill cops.
And in the end, Tupac the sermonizer & guns dabbler (& sex offender) got killed, and David Vincent the Clown is safe and sound

....and the moral of the story is???

What story? this is factual.
But if it was a story, maybe you could conclude that the bigger sermonizer, the bigger skeletons in the closet.
Its always funny to witness the gap between lectures and actions.

^ This guy's argument is essentially "don't have values, just accept the status quo."

No.
Have values but don't expect people to take you seriously if your actions don't match your words (for tupac it seems to be working anyway )
Spouting righteousness is quite simple, everybody can do that.

Just weird to bring up unrelated bad actions in the context of a black dude being anti-cop.

Unless those "bad actions" are illegal ; persistent offenders arnt exactly known to be fond of cops, so nothing weird here.

Legality and morality/values have nothing to do with each other.

Also, might I remind you, at least as far as America goes, we have a ton of bullshit laws as well as a horribly broken and defective criminal justice system that's enforced and bolstered by an even more corrupt and broken law enforcement.

So...yeah...

Keep in mind, it was illegal for gay people to get married two decades ago, and not that further back, it was illegal for an African-American to drink from the same water fountain as a Caucasian.
Illegal/legal has very little, if any, bearing on whether or not something is legitimate or even just.

If by that you mean 2 different sets without any intersection, that is plainly wrong.
I do agree that both sets are not merged though.


Okay i get it but regarding some of the rap artists themes : drug dealing, cop shooting, pimping, gang promoting, this stuff is illegal and have nothing to do with those bullshit laws you talk about. When you engage in that kind of things, your relations with the police are prone to be bad - even if the law enforcement was not corrupted and broken.
My point is : when you're a senior offender, just don't lecture people.

Absolute dork post right here. For every "outrageous" metal lyric about 'ghouls killing priests', there is one about real-life people committing heinous acts of violence, arson, torture and abuse.

Let me put it to you like this. Most, if not all, morally upstanding people tend to be law abiding citizens. However, not all law abiding citizens have a functioning moral compass.

The two are not inherently mutually inclusive, and whatever overlap there is between morality and legality exists out of pure happenstance. Anything else is purely subjective



Tupac's ostensibly shady past and decisions don't invalidate the points he's making

I think AP's pretty much correct to say that legality and morality are not unrelated, non-overlapping concepts. They're not exactly equivalent; some illegal actions are morally permissible (or perhaps praiseworthy, as in civil disobedience; maybe even morally obligatory), and some immoral actions are perfectly legal, etc. But ethics and the law don't constitute totally separate spheres, either. The law can be helpful, perhaps even a practical necessity, in promoting moral purposes; and often one's moral purposes stand to be frustrated by non-compliance with the law.

But AP's other point - that Tupac shouldn't be "lecturing" on racism and brutality in law enforcement - I don't see how that'd be a defensible statement. I'll leave it to others to critique it more thoroughly, but one thought I have is that it would be a pretty flagrant fallacy to argue, "If the loudest complainers about law enforcement are people who've been charged with crimes, then the complaints need not be taken seriously."

My post was deliberately tongue in cheek, because Reid was comparing writing B-rated horror movie lyrics with real calls to rebellion (to put it simply) ; but are you linking real violent behavior to some metal lyrics about violent crimes? And then it's perfectly identical to violent lyrics in rap music?
Well, im not sure about that. Rap artists, especially gangsta rap ones, talk about their own lives. Maybe not 100% of what they tell really happened, maybe they exaggerate it to get more "street cred". But there it is : they make a fair amount of young rap fans fantasize about the "thug life", and these rap singers tend to follow a type of behavior in real life that corroborates what they sing - don't mess with consistency. I am not saying they should be banned or something, that's art first and foremost and secondly i don't care.
But unless you can prove the Cannibal Corpse guys (for example, among hundreds or thousands bands that got these gory lyrics) are real serial killers, i don't think you can put the two types of violent lyrics and their perception by the audience, on the same level. So i think my initial post was not so "dork".


That's quite a stretch. Do you think murder is illegal by chance? Theft? Rape? Torture? Drug trafficking?
Unfortunately i think that my english skills will reach their limits if this conversation drifts to the foundations of the law and their philosophical crossroads. Im a bit familiar with Weber, Hocart, or Girard, but it won't be possible for me to dive into their works here in english. To speak the truth, i was not expecting to take so much time to answer on this message board, but i do it because my initial post caused these reactions, so i take the responsibility for it.


"Shady" seems to be a tepid adjective to me, for a guy who's been convicted for gang-rape complicity - among other things.
I've been a lurker here for a long time, since around 2005, and i've seen my share of destroyed artists on the message board, over simple accusations, without any official verdict. And all i see here, so far, is indulgence towards Tupac. I've seen "bad actions" above too. Like Tupac had "values" and didn't "accept the status quo". He did some mistakes and he's making points.
IMO his past partially invalidates the points he was making (im moderating my opinion here), and i will answer to Defenestrated at the same time :


To say something is a fallacy, doesn't make it a fallacy unless you explain why it is.
Like i said at the beginning of the post, gangsta rappers are offenders (or have been), thats just the way it is, if they happened to always be good, quiet, law-abiding citizens they wouldn't get any support from the scene. So how could their vision of the police be unbiased from the very start?
I am not saying zero cop have brutality or racism problems (especially in US), but to get a honest look about a group of people, i wouldn't trust those who hate them and get hated back, sometimes since a very early age. Again, it doesn't mean they're 100% wrong, but their problematic behavior doesn't make their point of view 100% right either. So in the end you don't learn anything : it's a mish mash of street education, grudge, judicial history, rebellion, all sorts of illegal activities, threats, and injustice, blunders, misbehavior, impunity. It's a total mess of partial truth, from both sides (the other side being : "the police has nothing to be blamed for, everyone is upright and professional"). You can't really make strong points in Tupac's situation because he has been fueled with anticop narrative, all his poor decisions generated exactly what he thought te be real, and in response he fueled it to the young generation. This is a loop.

Re. the specifics of the fallacy, it’s an ad hominem.

For example: If a basketball referee makes a questionable call, and the objections come from a player with a reputation for dirty, cheap, unsportsmanlike play... It doesn’t follow that the referee’s call was unobjectionable.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be assuming that laws are put in place in good faith and without some sort of ulterior motive behind them. A lot of the time, they're not, and we know that they're not.

Two examples I can think of off hand would be gun control laws and marijuana prohibition.

In regards to marijuana, people even began moralizing over it based on perceptions about people and groups that the powers that be didn't like or saw as lesser than (https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u- ... na-illegal) (https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... marijuana/). It certainly caught on, because some folks to this day still have those beliefs and moral positions.

Many of the gun control laws over the years were specifically put into place to either prevent minorities from having access to weapons or were done in response to minorities carrying/acquiring weapons to protect themselves from the injustices that they were suffering (https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol- ... amendment/) (https://www.mtv.com/news/jfft5p/the-rea ... in-america). The Mulford Act is a prime example. Done as a response to the Black Panthers openly carrying firearms in protest of the police brutality going on towards African-Americans at the time. On paper, it looks perfectly reasonable. It bans the open carrying of firearms in public with the exception of properly authorized law enforcement, and it's been law since 1969. But if you look at the reasoning behind why it was put into place, it may call into question its legitimacy.

On paper, to someone who may not know any better, these laws were put in place for good reasons and they sound perfectly understandable. But if you actually look at the underlying reasons why they were put in place and what they were trying to accomplish, it is very clear that there were some serious ulterior motives that went into said legislation.

Yes, laws can, in theory, be helpful and a practical necessity, but in practice, I don't think that's the case a lot of the time.



The funny thing is the very institution that makes the laws, aka, the government, has in one way or another committed many of those very crimes (again, just speaking about the government in my own country). But it's either condoned, swept under the rug or it's considered permissibl

The point I'm trying to make is, I don't need a law or the government to tell me that murder, rape, theft, torture, etc...are wrong, much in the same way I don't need a god or a religious text to tell me that they're wrong. In this instance, we're just replacing one set of rules/laws for another.

Alright, but if this dirty player comes to a TV show to drag all the refereeing body into the mud, would it be fallacious to remind him he's a POS of a player anyway? Because his attitude on the playground all over his career would have forced the referees to pay extra attention to him, for him to not ruin the game? Of course it wouldn't mean that every decision against him was justified (nor every other decision he would make objections to), but it would explain greatly his resentment against the referees in general - and therefore reduce (or even invalidate) the strength of his points.
I think your example is very helpful.


Yeah that's exactly where i didn't want to go lol
Laws don't teach what's right or wrong. They're there by social contract to enforce the morals when someone breaks the rules - because if nobody is going to stop you by force for doing wrong, it endangers the stability of a society. Then when laws start to forbid something you find moral, and allow something you find immoral, OR when the government practices itself something the law forbids to others, that's where you need philosophy to get your opinion lightened up. And it would be a nightmare to render in english.
(im not saying you're wrong or anything, it's just a really complex question that cannot be swept aside with "laws suck lol" <= you didn't say that either, that is just a caricature)

And if you don't (as the vast majority of humanity i guess) need laws to tell you murder, rape, torture, etc are wrong, it doesn't mean that the "overlap between morality and legality exists out of pure happenstance". To forbid something obvious to forbid is not a coincidence, actually its the opposite.
Law rules, religion rules and society morals are interconnected since centuries, maybe millenia. Maybe some of what you consider today obvious rules of good manners have been established as so in a religious text 740 years ago, which was applied by the law and survived through customs. It seems short-seen (?? i don't know how to express that) to me to categorically claim that neither law nor religion influenced your moral standpoints, because with enough retrospect there's a good chance they did.

I agree with the last-quoted sentence here. The words "can, in theory" are key; I'm not making a factual claim that all laws are immune from the sort of criticism you put forward. I don't think it'd be difficult to find numerous examples of laws that are oppressive, irrational, conceived in the interest of the rich and powerful, etc.

But I would hesitate to read a capriciously authoritarian motive into law in general, or law characteristically. To me that seems excessively cynical, and a stretch to apply to things like...I dunno, child-labor laws, truth-in-advertising laws, traffic laws - things that seem to make life in society more humane and orderly by way of setting reasonable standards.



In a way, sure. Apparently biased individuals are not incapable of speaking truthfully - but if there is no other way of assessing the credibility of their claims, apart from considering the likelihood of bias in the claimant...then yes, take the claim with a grain of salt, be reluctant to accept it. It's inconclusive at best, if there happen to be no evidentiary considerations aside from the integrity of the claimant. (Referees have conferences involving slow-motion replay from multiple vantage points, so, the integrity of the claimant wouldn't be a weighty consideration in my example.)

Yeah, but sometimes you still get some gems, like this vid of Jello Biafra fucking eviscerating Tipper Gore here: https://youtu.be/Q_7NSXnlQ64

Late because University stuff but I was able to ask David about this video in his official FB account and wether or not jhe mentioned this interview happening in his recently released biograpphy:
Cant post the screenshot but he did admit the interview happened but also stated that the clip was heavily edited.
I didnt bother to ask more because I forgot due to my schedule, but methinks hr would rather not talk about that since he didnt answer about wether or not it appears in his book.
Anyone who read his book, did he ever tall about meeting Tupac in the book? Like ever?

This was great btw. Thanks for posting.

I will say, Jello Biafra made a lot of real good points, but he did a whole hell of a lot of talking over Tipper Gore then acted all indignant and demanded that they "let him speak" when someone interrupted something he was saying.

Vincent is kind of a poser, as always lol. Wish the clip wasn't so heavily edited though.

It goes without saying, but in a debate, social skills and demeanor go a LONG way. Know your audience. It's why Frank Zappa got a haircut and donned a suit when talking to congress. It's smart to appeal to basic judgments. That is, it's smart if you actually want people to listen to your argument. I was watching an old debate about the Equal Rights Amendment on the original Firing Line with WHBIII, and the anti-ERA person was self-righteous and an abrasive steamroller. The caveman in us notices that element before the argument ever comes to mind. Her argument was shit, but her demeanor preceded it by several steps.

Dee Snider didn't seem to give a single solitary shit and people still talk about it decades later. Frankly, I love him even more for it.

This has been one fun as hell thread to read through hahahaha.