Hijacking the culture of American blacks.

Fortunately there are some out there who understand the divergence between charges of racism and abhorrent behavior. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell knows where much of the blame lies:

The problem is the hijacking of African-American culture by the hip-hop generation that has helped glorify every rotten, foul and disgusting racial stereotype it took generations to eradicate. The minstrels used to show up in black face, shuckin' and jivin' like Amos and Andy or Stepin Fetchit. Now they come in baggy pants sagging over their butts, glamorizing thug life and prison fashion, legitimizing derogatory racial insults into the mainstream, and convincing an entire generation that this is the measure of true blackness and anyone who bucks this system is either a racist, hopelessly out of touch or a sad Uncle Tom.

Mr. Burwell is both courageous and correct. But it is not only African-American culture that is in trouble. All of America strains under the burden of a kind of bread and circuses mentality. Blood sport does not exist only in the sphere of dog fighting.

"Vick Hunt." By Lisa Fabrizio, The American Spectator, 7/25/2007 (emphasis added).