How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the White Rapper

I was shy. So very shy as a child that I could not bear to even watch two people kiss on television while in the company of a coed environment. So you can very well imagine the reaction I had when George Michael's “I Want Your Sex” came blaring on Mrs. Rosenberg?s radio. I was in a carpool with her eldest and youngest daughters and someone else who I can?t recall right now. Sorry to my most anonymous carpool veteran.

Michael sang, “there are things that you hide and things that you don't.” And on that note, I hid my face. I turned bright red. A red so vibrant that it should only be reserved for Santa Claus costumes. I wanted to be anywhere other than in that car. Unfortunately, I was sitting in between the Rosenberg daughters so I couldn't open the door and jump out. I desperately wanted to do one of those Fall Guy stunts I had just seen Lee Majors perform the other night. Man, I had to act quickly before he said the s-e-x word. “Mrs. Rosenberg,” I piped up. I could not believe my own nerve. “Could you turn the station from this song? I find it inappropriate. Please, Mrs. Rosenberg. Only you can make this awkward atmosphere in the car turn from the thickness of cottage cheese to something more digestible.

“No,” Mrs. Rosenberg said, “I like this song.”

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While that George Michael incident was many years ago, I still find that I am unable to listen to that song. It just makes me feel really weird. Uncomfortable like being in a really tight shirt. And while admitting this publicly may label me as a “prude,” I am fine with that. Only because a year ago George Michael proved to me that sometimes saying those very words could get you into a lot of trouble. Especially when you say it to an undercover cop in a public bathroom.

But despite my ever- increasing passion for music, I still try to draw the line at what is inappropriate. I cannot tolerate the degradation of women in nu-metal and hip-hop. I cannot condone any sort of violence in music, regardless of how “metaphorical” it is. Artists are na