One day when I was on my way to the 9 to 5 last week, I did what I usually do: listen to the Cipha Sounds and Rosenberg morning show on Hot 97. I mean I won a $100 Best Buy gift card through their show once, and I’m a sucker for free shit, so you know I stay listening to them. For those not in the area or those who just never gave a fuck, the show goes like this: Cipha Sounds is the token Puerto Rican, Rosenberg is the token Hip Hop head Jew, and then there’s a girl, K Foxx, who tries to chime in with her two cents about shit but usually gets shut down by Rosenberg. It really is quite funny. Racist jokes are abundant, and hell, even their promotion (“A Black, a Puerto Rican, and a Jew” billboards lining the streets?) is racially slanted. But we all know it’s a joke. Hell, I even laugh at it half the time. Then again, I glued myself to this book for an hour after I bought it, so I obviously have no tact:
(In case you’re interested the book is great, and available at Amazon or currently for sale for $10 at the Powerhouse Arena at 37 Main St. in Brooklyn)
So it was only fitting that I’d laugh my ass off in my car when Cipha Sounds said this on air last week…
Oh, the classic Haiti and AIDS joke. We all know Haiti is fucked the fuck up, and this was the kind of quip that would be type offensive if you were Haitian…and the Haitian massive is strong out here in NYC. But let’s break this down a bit.
First of all, they make jokes like this all the time. About all sorts of races of people. It’s kinda their schtick. We all know it’s a joke. Second, it seems as if Cipha was a bit outdated in his joke anyway, as Haiti’s AIDS rate has been dropping and was estimated to be only a mere 2.2% in 2009, which leaves it with a lower rate than the District of Columbia during the same year. It probably would have stung more, statistically speaking, if Ciph had said he never messed with a D.C. girl.
What I’m saying is this push to get him fired all of a sudden, although I can understand the outrage from what he said, just seems a bit extra. If anything what this is doing is getting people like myself to look at the current situation surrounding the AIDS epidemic in Haiti, and abroad. Which isn’t exactly something at the forefront of the news. And now a lot of people are listening thanks to all the large Hip Hop media outlets picking up the story. If I were a Haitian offended by this comment, I’d be taking this opportunity to contact the press and get coverage on what the situation down there is really like right now, and spit out statistics to prove Ciph wrong. Turn the negative into a positive. At this point I’m sure he’s going to be thinking twice about what kind of jokes he cracks on air, and probably off the air as well. We all say stupid shit, is this really worth firing him over? Plus anyway, if I ever wake up early enough again to hear their show I don’t really need to hear K Foxx and Rosenberg bickering with each other all morning.
