Prof Henry Lewis Gates called [2 Live Crew]’s body of work ‘refreshing’ and ‘astonishing’ and compared its use of bawdy language to the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Joyce. Gates insisted to the jury that lines [from their songs] amounted to an imaginative use of metaphor. "It’s like Shakespeare’s ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’" the good professor helpfully explained, while misattributing Robert Burns’ line to Shakespeare. This invocation of the Bard of Avon (or, as it happens, Robert Burns) to defend the content of rap music brings to mind George Orwell’s comment, "There are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them."
Source unknown, but see this link (search for ‘Gates’ on the page).
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