Oh, for fuck's sake, 50 Cent

Despite my being whiter than Mitt Romney jerking off on a polar bear skin rug, I'm a fan of a lot of rap. Jay-Z, Nas, Immortal Technique and (when he remembers that he does, in fact, make music) Kanye are all among my favorites. I'm writing this preface so that you understand that I'm not doing some hipster "it should be called CRAP music!" thing when I say I really don't get 50 Cent's appeal.

I mean, yes, I get his appeal; he has the mystique of his actual history, and that makes the kind of stuff he raps about seem more authentic. What I don't get is how that outweighs his tone-deafness and the fact that he is, by all appearances, a major asshole (yeah, I know I mentioned Kanye above, but Kanye doesn't sound like Tom Waits with his wisdom teeth out). Fitty's musical mediocrity aside, his online presence is so obnoxious that it was the namesake of an article about the dumbest celebrities on Twitter. So no, I can't exactly act surprised by the fact that last week [Stewie voice] Mr. CENT Tweeted, in response to a fan heckling him about an album release "“yeah just saw your picture fool you look autistic", which he later followed up by saying “I don’t want no special ed kids on my time line follow some body else.” I could say something about how apparently Fitty's vastly superior non-special ed didn't teach him that "timeline" and "somebody" are both single words, but then, if he wasn't a fucking moron, I wouldn't be writing this post in the first place.

Cent's comments were noticed by actress Holly Robinson Peete, whose son is autistic; Peete posted an open letter on her website in response. Some choice excerpts:

Do you even know what autism is? And what exactly does “autistic” look like? Do you know how wildly prevalent autism is? 1 in 88 have it. That’s 1 in 54 boys. Families suffer a social stigma you will never know.

[snip]

I hope you can see how what you might see as a benign insult-or not- was so randomly hurtful, immature and misinformed. Maybe you are naive or indifferent as to how many of your fans might be deeply and personally offended by your insult. At the very least-can you please delete it? If you’ve read your mentions today I am sure you have felt the wrath of autism parents. We are no joke. Neither is autism. We are not about to let you attempt to make “autistic” the new “R-word” under our watch.

Ms. Peete says a lot that I'd have said in her position, in a much more eloquent, mature way than I could have (nary a joke about presidential candidates masturbating in the entire letter, for example); I'm particularly grateful she addressed the stigma of autism, even as diagnoses are on the rise; if I had a nickel for every person I've told I was on the spectrum who had acted shocked and said something like "I just thought you were smart", I could put all of those nickels in a sock and hit them with it while yelling "Disabilities and intelligence aren't mutually exclusive, you dick!" And Cent has since posted a bizarre mea culpa that seems half sincere apology, half fake one (actual quote: "it was not my intention to offend anyone and for this I apologize".)

That said, I think Ms. Peete is misconstruing 50 Cent's motivations; it's probably true that he doesn't understand what autism is, but I doubt that's why he said what he said; he probably said it because he's kind of a douchebag.  And people like that don't need to be told what autism is; they need to be told it's not clever or "edgy" to use disabilities as insults. And possibly hit with my nickel-sock, if time allows; God knows Fitty's been through worse.