In Poland’s view on “how to approach objectionable lyric?” He simply tries to distinguish between “hate speech” and protest, if the meaning of the lyric cause destruction to a certain community. Then, according to Poland, it’s not appropriate. For instance, if the lead singer of a band holds a biased view towards minority citizens and he comes to Saco to perform his controversial song here live, then it will cause chaos in the community. People may get hurt. IF it’s a protest song then the writer is trying to reveal something that he/she thinks is wrong in there community or life. For example  “Cop Killer” by Body Count does fit into this case. Despite the violence portion in the lyrics, the purpose of this song is to protest against police brutality on African Americans. The songwriter has no history of killing cops and this song didn’t make any police officer less safe, so it doesn’t count as “hate speech.” The reason why people have such a strongly critical view on “Cop killer” is because of the rice of the songwriter. He points out a different band that produced a song that its lyric is strongly analogous with “cop killer.” It turns out, nobody really said anything. The main reason is that the band member is white.

Race do play a strong role in this case. In my understanding, the race of an individual has influence people’s impression on others in a deep way. However, he falls to distinguish a clear line between “hate speech” and protest. His words don’t serve the purpose or clarify the idea he proposed. Furthermore, just simply states that society has a low tolerance for black people compared to white people when it comes to objectionable lyric is not enough. Lack of evidence and analysis undermine the credibility of this article. Matt in the other hand gives a deep analysis under the topic of “does the race of article impact our objection.” Not only he points out the issue but also indicates the reason behind it.

Matt believes that the essential way to approach objectionable lyric is to acknowledge the term “rhetorical distance”  He indicates that one useful way it introduced is “fiction narrator”. Those violent actions in the lyric don’t mean that the singer actually did anything like it. A vivid example of this would be “Blaze of Glory” by Bon Jovi. At one point, the lyric contains words like this “I’m a six-gun lover”  No one actually thinks that he is a six-gun lover. Or when Johnny Cash sings “ I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” I don’t think he actually killed a man in Reno. The reason they do it is to “play a character”. “To sing it in the first person a character who is fed up with police brutality.” Sadly black rap singer doesn’t get the privilege to be seen as playing the character. People often reflect the song as their true nature, but when a white artist does the same thing. Sadly, they do be seen as playing a character.

Angela Sun, unlike others, cast a different view under the topic of “objectionable lyrics.” She focused on “why do people tolerant objectionable in the contest of music but not anything other than music?” People often say argues its “whatever, it’s the stones” or “it’s a difficult time. ” However, she argues that the artist’s “popularity” of the artist and the social/political background at the time does not explain why they should do it. She indicates when we listen to a song that has aggressive content, most people can not understand the true meaning of it without seriously studying the background of the song and artist, even when we sing it over and over again.  Moreover, the melody, cheerful tune and stunning beats made the aggressiveness cutie. Therefore when we are okay with it as long as it comes with beats and instruments.

Sun took an interesting approach to join this conversation. It’s reasonable that beats and melody has an impact on our judgment. However, the information she provides is somewhat basic. It doesn’t apply to enough situations, and there is a lack of source that back up her argument. With more sources to support her argument, it will make more concrete, solid and convincing.