An Arizona Teenager Was Fatally Stabbed. The Suspect Blames Rap Music.

[conuly]

I've got another explanation, buddy. It starts with an r and it rhymes with "day schism".

I must say, putting aside his stated motive, I have to wonder what his thought processes are that he thinks telling people that this is why he did it is a good idea.

Comments

[chanter1944]

Jackass might be trying to set himself up for an insanity defense, for better or worse because that's not mental incompetence, it's evil disguising itself with sunglasses and a fake mustache. I bet he thinks people will believe him, though, and some might, sadly.

It's just occurred to me that, in revealing his supposed reason, he might be trawling for sympathy from the public. Again, I'm afraid he may get at least some. :(

[conuly]

The insanity defense almost never plays out, even for people who are actually mentally ill and whose illness absolutely affected their judgment and behavior.

And even then, they still get locked up.

If that's what he's going for, it's still a bad move.

[siderea]

The article I read elsewhere reported he already was known to have a serious mental health history.

This is not an either-or thing. The thing about racism is that we're all swimming in it, including the people with severe mental illnesses. That can have some pretty ugly consequences.

[conuly]

That... makes sense. I presume a non-mentally-ill bigot might at least have the sense to keep his mouth shut about his motives. Then again, people do lots of strange things that make no sense, so who knows.

[chanter1944]

Unless the not-mentally-ill bigot were trawling for sympathy and/or agreement from the like-minded, including among potential jurors, whatever defense he employed along with his admission (and whether or not it worked). Moot point, I suppose.

[chanter1944]

Got me there. I... had not seen the article re mental health history. :( My image of him defaulted to garden variety neurotypical white racist dude, I admit.

[steorra]

'rhymes with "day schism"'

This makes me suspect you pronounce 'schism' differently than I do. I have [sk] at the beginning. Do you have just [s]?

(Apparently just [s] is the older pronunciation, and [sk] is a well-established spelling pronunciation.)

[conuly]

No, I don't say it differently from you. But they still rhyme even though the medial consonant is different.

[steorra]

Hmm, interesting ... apparently you have a different concept of rhyme than I do.

I wouldn't say "racism" rhymes with "day [sk]ism" I'd say each syllable rhymes - "ra(cism)" rhymes with "day" and "(ra)cism" rhymes with "[sk]ism", but on the level of the whole word "racism", I'd need everything to match from the stressed vowel to the end of the word.

[conuly]

And I only need the last vowel and consonant to rhyme - and in a pinch, the last consonant can just be really similar, like man and damn. That's an imperfect rhyme, but sometimes you just can't make it work otherwise.

[steorra]

You just have a multisyllabic rhyme! (Which seems kind of appropriate in the context...)

(Also, I've enjoyed the exploration of the history of rhyme that I tangented to from this conversation, so thanks for prompting some investigation :-) )

[conuly]

:D

[conuly]

At any rate, I couldn't think of another word that ended with -acism, so it was moot.

[havocthecat]

...no, really, people still do shit like that? Ugh, of course they do.

[thewayne]

I'm so glad I no longer live in the Phoenix area. I hope and expect this idiot is going to get a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

[silveradept]

In addition to being terribly day-schismatic, they're not original. Rap music has been accused of being a corrupting influence for decades. Was it ever accused as being part of the Satanic Panic, or am I just conflating all sorts of terrible ideas with each other?

[siderea]

So this is a big topic on which I'm not prepared to go into a full disquisition, but the history of the Satanic Panic has crossed my desk recently (from two directions no less), and I've been particularly struck by how the Satanic Panic was about the imagined bad behavior of (some) white people. So, long story short: no, I don't think it was? It was heavy metal that the crusaders against satanism were so incensed by, and back then, heavy metal and rap/hip-hop were seen as, er, antithetical. And very, very racially segregated. Also, to my knowledge rap may have always had heavy crime (gangsta) themes, it didn't go in for the satanic imagery that caused the uproar.

Which is not to say that rap wasn't despised by some of the same sorts of people at the same time. Wikipedia has a good rundown of the contemporaneous controversies around gangsta rap, which apparently did not get sucked into that crazy.

[silveradept]

Thank you! I wouldn't have been surprised at all if it had been included, but I guess rap and that became more of a general thing pious people be children needed "saving" from instead.