Madam, - How disappointing to see that the lifestyle culture of rap and hip-hop is being presented to Irish schools as some form of art and positive engagement for children (Transition Times, December 13th).
Hip hop and rap, with their encouragement of misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, drugs, violence and thuggery, have already condemned tens of thousands of young, innocent African-Americans to a world of poverty, misery, crime, prison and, in some cases, untimely death as they seek to emulate so-called "artists" who present themselves as "voices of the ghetto" while making millions of dollars in the process.
Kanye West, whom the article posits as a role model for young "rappers", spent $350,000 to replicate Michelangelo's frescos from the Sistine Chapel ceiling in his Hollywood dining-room. "I'm the closest that hip-hop is getting to God. In some situations I'm like a ghetto pope," he said. Some role model for "the Pope's children".
Ireland has plenty of native cultural endeavours that its children can engage in, instead of aping the worst aspects of an imported, manufactured, American culture in the form of the menacing cant and contrivance of hip-hop. - Yours, etc,
WOJCIECH BLASKA, Lombard Street West, Dublin 8.