Common

A rapper called Common went to the White House for some sort of confab celebrating American poetry.  Because he has had friendly things to say about cop-killing and has said "Burn a Bush", right-wingers and police organizations object to the invitation.  The Daily Beast's Chris Lee covers it thusly:

Sarah Palin went after the Chicago MC on Twitter. Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, called Common a “thug” on Fox News, claiming the performer urged the assassination of President Bush and promoted violence against police in his poem, "A Letter to the Law," during a 2005 Def Poetry Jam performance. And conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website referred to Common (government name Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr.) as a “controversial” rapper.

Meanwhile, fans familiar with Common’s contributions to hip-hop were like, Really? Common a Thug? Controversial! Nah.  Call it the latest evidence of a widening divide between Red State America and the hip-hop nation....Outside the Fox News set, Common’s mild-mannered demeanor, his charitable work for AIDS awareness and PETA, even his preppie garb and neatly trimmed beard are seen as a repudiation of gangsta rap’s scary chest thumping and egocentrism.

So hip-hop nation thinks one thing, Fox News nation thinks another, but Daily Beast readers know this means hippidy-hoppidy people get it, while Common's critics don't.  Common doesn't cultivate an image as a thug or a controversial figure, so people who find him controversial must be making a mistake. 

But if people don't like what you say, then it's controversial.  Image doesn't really matter- people's objection is "someone who said x is being invited to the White House", not "someone who projects the image of a thug rapper is being invited to the White House."

Furthermore, Lee admits "just about every MC...has...said something...specifically intended to piss off the mainstream", including Common.  So being anti-anti-Common is just a cheap way of identifying yourself as independent of the mainstream- cheap because you have your own mainstream of blue-state America, which includes the current President of the United States, to lean on. 

If you're part of the Red State/Fox News mainstream, you by definition don't get it.  If you're part of the Blue State mainstream, you are conscious, you understand that Common is conscious, and that he says the things he says to shock the Red State/Fox News mainstream into that same elevated consciousness.  Lee notes that Common is "best known as a 'conscious rapper'"; Provokation, Lee says, is "a well-traveled route to provoking discourse.  And, obviously, discourse raises consciousness. 

Too bad Common sold out, not only by appearing at the WH, but by saying "The one thing that shouldn't be questioned is my support for the police officers and the troops that protect us every day."  Sarah Palin could hardly have put it better.