At first glance viewers might have thought it was a slow news day when Albuquerque's NBC affiliate led its 10 p.m. newscast with a story about rapper Afroman.
This story didn't seem to typify the old adage used by some about television media, "If it bleeds, it leads."
But in another way it did - admittedly not an actual physical bleeding but as an example of a slow cultural bleed of the morals and values that made us once the greatest nation in the world.
The KOB-TV lead story was about Afroman's song "Because I Got High," which has some parents fuming, no pun intended, and kids and radio station personnel saying the song is a musical phenomenon.
Comments about the song on Afroman's Web site, www.hungryhustler.com included ones like this. "Never before in my career have I seen a record react like this," wrote Steven Strick, a rock radio WBCN assistant program director.
". It is bigger than anything else we have on the air," echoes WXRK Music Director Mike Peer.
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The response to the song has been higher than when K-Mart's blue light special was at its peak.
For example, Albuquerque's KKSS-FM had about 100 requests in one day.
While Afroman, also known as Joseph Forman, told The Boston Globe in a recent interview that "Because I Got High" is simply a "dumb song," and is not supposed to be a pro-pot anthem, maybe he should tell his fans.
A smattering of postings on his Web site included gems such as this from Holden, Louisiana: "I'm glad Afroman's finally getting all the recognition he deserves; he's by far my favorite rapper to listen to when I'm high, stoned, blowed out or just sober, so all I've got to say is Afroman's about to flip the scrip!"
In addition, most of the postings on the site are peppered with foul language and the site also includes a caricature of Afroman smoking.
So how did this obvious cultural gem of a song come about?
Afroman told The Boston Globe that he wrote the song last year after plans to clean his room evaporated in a ganja haze when a friend visited.
"Right before I was going to clean the room, one of my buddies I hadn't seen in a long time came by with a big blunt. And I didn't do anything that whole day.
"Around 4 p.m., I was sitting there about to fall asleep because I was really tired. I was going to make a last-ditch effort to clean the room, but then I started writing the lyric, `I was gonna clean my room until I got high.' And the rest of the words came in a domino effect."
We won't go into the portion laced with grossly foul language that is totally disrespectful to women and sounds like it came straight from the garbage pit.
"I messed up my entire life because I got high / I lost my kids and wife because I got high / Say what, say what, say what, say what, ohhh / Now I'm sleepin' on the sidewalk and I know why / Why man? / Cause I got high / I'm a stop singing this song because I'm high / I'm singing this whole thing wrong because I'm high."
So here's the point.
Stations around the country are playing this song quite happily, apparently not caring what songs like this and others are doing to our nation's fast fading collective morality.
Despite the song's demeaning attitude toward women and sexual intimacy, Afroman's hypocritical lambasting of corporate America while milking the system for all it's worth, program directors are going nuts over it.
One employee from a local radio station said that they have no intention of banning the controversial song.
One hundred requests a day for the song on this station were apparently the only criteria deemed necessary to justify its continued airplay.
However, a few months ago, the management of this same Albuquerque radio station sang a different song when Joy Junction, the emergency homeless shelter I founded and direct, turned down a $1,200 gift from a local homosexual group that raised the donation by holding a drag show.
Our refusal made Bruce Pollock, the general manager of Simmons Media, and the owners of KKSS-FM, upset enough to ban me from his airwaves, where I had been an occasional substitute talk show host.
In this supposedly politically-correct age, I find decision making like this curious.
Joy Junction turned down some money we believed was inappropriately raised for a ministry like ours to accept, and I was banned from Pollock's radio stations.
Afroman comes out with this filthy song which is a blight upon community standards and KKSS-FM and other corporate media moguls are determined to keep playing it.
Could it be that Simmons and other media conglomerates don't care about community standards and that the bottom line is money?
After all, if they had let me continue on the air, some of their gay listeners may have been offended and they may have lost bucks.
If they had pulled this song from the airwaves, then presumably they feel they would have lost money too.
In every city in the nation where this song has been played, it is the actions of radio programmers that have made, at least initially, Afroman a hit and that at the expense of our young people's morality.
It is time all of us stood up as Christians or conservatives and let these media conglomerates like Simmons and others know that giving airplay to songs like this and others are not the actions of good, responsible corporate citizens.
You may contact Simmons Media by writing to www.simmonsmedia.com/ALB/feedback.asp or by writing Simmons in New Mexico at RadioBruce@aol.com.
