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Thursday, April 09, 2009

The Onion - Rappers and schizophrenia

No, I'm not trying to analize The Onion sense of humour. It's because while writing the post below I remembered that Mark has said in a comment that he thought one of The Onion's article offensive when they approached schizophrenia.
I've searched and found this article:
"According to UCLA Hospital psychiatrist Dr. Ernest Bloch, the distorted sense of reality exhibited by many rappers may indicate a predisposition toward a wide range of serious mental disorders, including schizophrenia." (emphasis mine)

"Many of these rappers create fictional, internal universes that, for them, become a sort of alternate reality," Bloch said. "For example, a young rapper named Kurupt told me how the feds have tapped his phones, and how he's wanted in more states than John Gotti. A New York-area MC by the name of Nas told me that he was recently chased in his Lexus by CIA agents but managed to escape when Pablo Escobar, his business partner and passenger, shot the driver of the pursuing vehicle. These sorts of paranoid, delusional fantasies are classic warning signs of schizophrenia, and an afflicted rapper's condition can deteriorate to the point where he is completely insane in the membrane."(emphasis mine)
I consider it disrespectful. Perhaps their aim is not humor. I'll have to check it but what if I find out that some of their editors are psychopaths?

6 comments:

jennifer said...

As a journalist (and in general as just a human being), the stuff the Onion says is quite disrespectful and not funny in my opinion. I try to avoid ever reading anything the Onion writes.

However, with that being said, I do somewhat agree with what they say about the rappers. If you listen to rap music and listen to interviews with the rappers, you can see that some of them live in a constant state of paranoia. They have their own alternate realities, and who knows if anything they believe/say is real or fake. I agree with the Onion on the idea that most rappers have some sort of mental illness, whether it's schizophrenia or something else.

Ana said...

I'm glad it's not only me who think that some of their articles are disrespectful.
I know too little about rappers, their the cultural and social aspects.
Cannot say too much about their mental problems.

Mariah said...

Some of The Onion is fantastic. But sometimes they go too far.

I see this article as poking more fun at rappers than mental illness. I agree with BPD- many rappers clearly have issues, a diagnosable mental disorder or otherwise.

Ana said...

Mariah,
Yes, they are poking fun at rappers.
I really don't know rappers behaviour.

Mark p.s.2 said...

"poking fun at rappers", using the insult of mental illness.

If you consider mental illness an insult, which it is. but only a doctor-psychiatrist can assign this insult.

Ana said...

Wow!
There it goes another post on mental illness, rappers and African Americans.
It's all confused here.

"and an afflicted rapper's condition can deteriorate to the point where he is completely insane in the membrane.""

I consider this phrase a totally absurd.
The allusion to Pablo Escobar...
This is sick. This article is nonsense for me.