RAHEEM: I've read your column, Hart. You are the kindah guy who sits down in your "Turd Coast" trailer park and watches guys selling huntin' knives on late night TV, has seen and memorized every single episode of "Cops" to jabber with your "Ole Boys" about around the roach coach, and think the National Enquirer and Star magazine are holy writ.

Who's that supposed to impress? Not me, Brah.

You want an "intelligent argument"? Well here it is:

There is more to popular culture than celebrity boff counts, gossip and political scandals. You ever considered that literature is part of "popular" culture, as is dance and music, my friend? Let alone the current events of the day, which lots of folks still manage to pay attention to despite March Madness and all these corporate-conglomerate-media opiates forced down they TV-addicted gullets.

If it was my beat to cover popular culture, I don't think I'd do thangs much different from what I am now. I'd just be more topical. Other than that, I'd talk about things that really matter in most folks lives.

Thomas Hart

Like I said, now's you've actually given us your misguided theory of what Popular Culture is, I can proceed to provide you with the education you so obviously and so sorely need.

It's clear from the foregoing that you don't have the clue of half-blind penquin as to what "really matters" to the American people! Listen and learn, California Boy!

1. Real Americans love blood and guts! The guttier the better. This war on terrorism is the best thang that's happen to not only TV news, but the very E Pluribus Union itself! Folks are fallin' all over themselves to demonstrate how supportive they be of the idea of America taking on the world again! Standing Tall like we did in WW 2, the Big One! You ever seen a generation of slackers work so hard to show they had actual cajones and are not the soft couch potatoes that they bathroom scales says they is? I doubt it.
2. The second best thing about American popular culture is the World Wrestling Federation, even in its "family-friendly" new incarnation. There's still enough maulin', mayhem and soap-opera backstory to make it worth religious devotion, week in and week out.
3. After that, but no less important, what really matters to the American people is to be the best consumers they can be. Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, and KMart are the pinnacle of social achievement at the top of the food chain of species, Brother High Horse, and don't you forget it! There's a durned reason Rosie O'Donnell got all them Emmys.

RAHEEM: Hart, I feel bad having you expose to the reading public what a sorry, low-life excuse for a human being you really are. I mean that.

But since I drew these cards, there's nothing for a brother to do but play them out.

The mere fact that you conclude your so-called education with the mention of that sweathog Rosie O'Donnell speaks volumes about where your head is at. I don't think I need to elaborate. But when you stop staring at your hemorrhoids, I suggest that you join the rest of us where the sun does shine.

Up here among us Surface Dwellers, peeps understand that that phrase "popular culture" has the word "culture" as its last name. You probably never noticed that. So here's the scoop, redneck: a culture comes from having a history and a sense of values and creativity and vitality. These are expressed in the music and art of a people, not in their penchant for the salacious.

Of course, participating in the culture is all about involving yourself in something beside consuming mass quantities and comparing dick sizes, understand what I'm sayin'?

Participating in a culture means having the ability to appreciate its fruits, work to ameliorate its drawbacks, and (if you are blessed) make a positive contribution ot its enrichment. (I understand that these are all concepts beyond your pea-brained comprehension, but I thought I'd share them with you anyway. Maybe one of your friends from the Pleistocene Era can gnarl up his fore-brow and figure it out for ya.)

Case in point, here above ground we got places called public libraries. Some of them still even have books in them. You can go there for FREE and find everything from books to videos, record albums, music CDs, and even DVDs of movies in some times, like here in Oakland, Calif -- and you check all them out for FREE, too, instead of giving your hard-earned Benjamins to Blockbuster, the franchise from Hell. You might want to try it, plowboy. It might expand your knowledge of America's true popular culture.


COUNTER-PUNCH:

HART: I appreciate your sharing that with me, RR. I been wondering what them huge, empty mausolea was I been passin' on my way to the arena to see the Smack Down. Now I knows. Nice thang is, since the dang parking lot to them lib'ary places is always empty, I'll be assured no waiting!

I see a few of y'all Hipper-than-Thou types around them places you calls museums and coffee shops, too. Been meanin' to check them out, as well. Though, there don't seem to be much of a rush, since they's always empty, too. Maybe if y'all start serving some longnecks it might help yer business. Whaddaya think?

Seriously, RR, I am aware of what you're tryna point out with your long-winded little argument. BUT HOW MANY READERS YOU 'PECT WOULD FLOCK TO MY COLUMN OR THE G21 TO READ ABOUT THAT YAWN MATERIAL? Need I say more? Dirt is in, mostly because it almost always includes some referene to sex.

So remember, pard': It will always take more than a few tornadoes to blow away all the trailer trash.

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