Rap Sheet

A short article in the Wisconsin State Journal last weekend was interesting for a couple of reasons. Basically it was about a “riot” that had occurred Sunday night at the High Noon Saloon. About twenty police officers were called to the bar to quell a melee involving up to 50 people. Twice in the article it was mentioned that marijuana was present, even going as far as to attribute the violence to it’s presence. Police spokesman Mike Hanson said “Marijuana mixed with alcohol fueled the aggressive atmosphere that led to the fights.”

I thought that was a rather curious statement to make since most people think that weed usually has just the opposite effect. I even remember an article a couple of years ago during that rash of soccer riots in Europe that one plan they seriously considered to control the hooligans was to make sure they had access to pot because they were far less likely to start some violence when under it’s influence. So Hanson’s comment made no sense to me and I wondered why he would say that. Reading on in the article I think I found the reason.

They interviewed a bartender and the bar owner, Cathy Dethmers, about the brawl. They both tried to downplay the seriousness of the fight naturally, although the bartender said it was "10 times worse" than any previous fight he'd seen at the High Noon. Dethmers then leaked the tidbit nobody wanted to mention. The article quoted her:

Dethmers said more than 100 customers were at the bar to hear a R&B disc jockey, and she expected it to be "a mellow kind of night."
Although the show also featured hip-hop, Dethmers said the fight had nothing to do with the music. But she said she did not intend to work with the show's promoter again.
"I've booked plenty of my own hip-hop and not had any problems," Dethmers said. "It was a handful of troublemakers that just happened to come to the show."

In the other Madison newspaper, The Crapital Times, the article was almost identical except that there was no reference to hip hop at all. (For those of you who may not know it, our two competing dailies have a somewhat incestuous relationship. They have a convoluted ownership arrangement involving a holding company that allows them to appear separate while they are actually the same entity. They do compete for readers, but they have divvied up things so that they don’t really step on each others toes. The State Journal does a morning edition and the Sunday paper and they are moderately conservative. The Capital Times does the afternoon edition and is wacko liberal. Often, identical news articles appear in each.)

Trust me when I say that the omission by the Cap Times was no accident. You see we’ve already been down this road before. Within the past year a popular downtown bar called the Majestic was forced to close when they experienced similar outbreaks of violence. This place had a rotation of acts throughout the week. They’d have old time burlesque one night, drag queens the next and “Late Night Catechism” the next. Of course the violence exclusively happened on hip hop night. They tried metal detectors at the door. They hired private security to supplement the substantial police presence that was now required each time they had hip hop. And when the cops did arrest somebody, invariably, the guy who got shot/stabbed/beaten would refuse to cooperate and the perp would be set free. Nothing worked and they were eventually shut down. And throughout the entire affair the hue and cry was “Hip hop does not cause violence. The music is not the problem.” They even had an editorial written by a young newspaper intern who said she could prove the music was not the problem. She liked and listened to hip hop, and she had never been violent! Case closed.

When Dethmers said “the fight had nothing to do with the music” she was right only in the sense that the thugs involved were probably not fighting over who’s better, 50 Cent or Snoop Dogg. Yes, I’m sure it was a “handful of troublemakers,” but they didn’t “just happen to come to the show.” They sought that show out and they will again the next time somebody puts on a hip hop show.