I will admit that I haven’t really given Ke$ha’s Animal a fair listen. I’ve been known to pause for her songs on the radio, or request her singles when Dan’s DJing car rides with his iPod. They’re fun, poppy dance tunes–or are they?

My Brownie troop is made up of seven- and eight-year-old girls. I’d say a handful of them have fairly involved parents who actively monitor what’s going on in their daughters’ lives and the rest have parents who are trying their best but virtually clueless. One of the girls was singing “TiK ToK” at our meeting this past week, confusing some of the girls who don’t know what a Ke$ha is. Two tables of girls were arguing back and forth as to whether it’s “key-sha” or “keh-sha.” I was already at my wit’s end because they were sewing bean bags to earn a Try-It.

I bought myself a huge Shamrock Shake as a reward for surviving that night, but since then I’ve also been fuming over the very fact that I had to stop an eight-year-old from yelling/singing about brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack.

While I realize that such a conservative stance goes against my very nature and all I’ve aspired to be myself, I can’t help but be upset by Ke$ha’s lyrical content. In a time where we’re trying to push girls to respect themselves, songs like Ke$ha’s undermine efforts to promote healthy decisions and self-respect–even if her lyrics are meant to mock or be sarcastic.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Ke$ha states says about her latest single, “Blah Blah Blah”:

“It’s a cool song about a woman talking to a man the way men always speak to women. If you listen to any rap or pop station, the way men talk to women is just so cheeky and a little bit degrading. I’m not offended by it though – I just think it’s funny. This track is meant sarcastically. It’s me throwing it back.”

However, when trying to explain to my Mom why I was so upset about the Girl Scouts incident, I found myself unable to read the lyrics aloud to her. Now, considering I regularly use profanity around my mother AND discuss my personal life with her, I would say I’m not a complete puritan. And I’m really not sure if my inability to read “Just turn around, boy, let me hit that / Don’t be a little bitch with your chit chat / Just show me where your dick’s at” to my Mom would truly classify me as a prude. Maybe it does.

My friend and fellow blogger AJ Star, of Stalking with the Stars, recently posted “On Radio Edits” after watching Ke$ha’s American Idol performance where the lines that gave me so much trouble were changed to “Just turn around, boy, let me get that / Don’t be a little chick with your chit chat / Just show me who you are.” AJ’s premise is not about how the integrity of songs is compromised by “radio-friendly editing/censorship” but rather that it’s pointless to choose songs “as singles and then butched for radio play and live performances.” I agree with her point even though my blog comments contained a condensed and angsty version of my Girl Scout rant (i.e., I missed her point on there because I was still really pissed off). If Ke$ha truly wants “Blah Blah Blah” to “throw it back” to men who objectify women in their music, why choose a single–or, dare I say, pen a song–where the lyrics will have to be altered so much for mainstream play that it will completely undermine her point? After all, how is “don’t be a little chick” conveying a feminist message at all? He’s whining, so he’s a girl? What happened to Ke$ha’s girl power?

It’s not fair to pin extra responsibility on female artists, but such is the plight of women in general. Yes, it sucks that men constantly objectify women in pop/hip-hop songs. But how is writing a song mocking that an effective way to take a stance against such objectification?

Maybe it’s the responsibility of the parents to keep their eight-year-olds from singing about excessive partying, Jack Daniels and boys trying to touch their junk, but a pop artist makes a song with the intention of it reaching #1 on the charts and gaining huge exposure through mainstream radio play, so isn’t it partially up to them to have some couth? Some subtlety? Some understanding that their song has the potential to make an impression on young minds?

Then again, maybe it’s me. Perhaps I’m just getting old; maybe I’m turning into a prude. I managed to harness the girls’ energy into a rousing round of “Make New Friends” and then had them sing songs they learned in their elementary school music classes. Still, knowing some of them–and their parents–makes me worry about what they’re learning from mainstream popular culture that inundates their little lives. And I truly wish their parents would tell Ke$ha to get off their lawns, as I would be apt to do if she ever showed up at my house with a bottle of Jack.

What would the letters to the editor be titled if Hillary Clinton had won in the primaries? Delightful plays on the candidate’s last name would not be possible; Hillary would not be an “Obamanation.” Granted, if it was Clinton up against John McCain, we’d be talking about how PMS might lead to nuking our allies or how bitches can’t be trusted (none of which comes up when we talk about that lovely little Sarah Palin character, who has now apparently gone rogue against her handlers). When did this race turn into one bad email forward? A look at my small town newspaper probably reflects plenty of those “Real American” newspapers. “Real Americans” don’t need facts; they apparently answer to a larger truth (where dinosaurs walk with man?) and John McCain, according to Jon Stewart, will be President of these areas (see the Nancy Pfotenhauer link below).

I live in a small town in south central Pennsylvania (an area that falls under Nancy Pfotenhauer’s “Real America“). For every liberal or moderate letter to the editor our local paper prints, they counter it with two or three conservative letters. “Barack President? An Obamanation” details Obama’s ties to the evil terrorist William Ayers and closes with, “An Obama presidency means a national breeding ground of neo-Weathermen terrorists. Talk about an Obamanation.” A letter titled “We deserve to keep what we’ve earned” seizes on the “spread the wealth around” comment and going on a tirade about socialism when the person writing it would likely fall under Obama’s proposed middle class benefits (there are very few around here who make more than $250,000 a year).

Other letters, including one from my cousin’s mother-in-law, praise the McCain/Palin campaign for being “what America really needs!” They don’t justify their claims with proof aside from Palin being a “reformer” from outside the beltway and McCain being a war hero. Apparently, that’s enough. We haven’t learned what inexperience can do in a presidency, have we?

Perhaps the issue I find most annoying in this election relates to reproductive rights. For a few weeks now, I’ve been bombarded with commercials with a lady’s voice talking about how Obama voted against protecting infants that survived abortion and how he, essentially, eats babies with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, with the image of a cute white baby rolling around on a blanket on my way-too-large television. In local print, a letter titled, “Honor God with November Vote” references only the Bible and asks, “If we can kill our babies without remorse, who’s to say that our elderly aren’t the next targets?” Presumably, the writer’s message is to vote for McCain. Another recent letter to the editor, “First issue is right to life,” ignores the fact that the economy is in shambles and we’re overextended in two wars and goes straight to the matter at hand: Obama should want to save babies because he’s black. In fact, according to this letter, “Because of [their pro-choice stances], each candidate is a contradiction to either his civil-rights heritage or his doctrine of faith.” I’m not going to judge this man (out loud) for wanting to extend his personal beliefs to my womb, but I am going to question how this could possibly be the first issue for someone right now. Hell, it’s one of the things I’ve been passionate about since I was 14 and it’s barely in my top 10. (#1 is making sure hunting wolves doesn’t become the national pastime.)

What draws me in are the Topix Forums associated with each letter to the editor. Here, wacko people like me can run amuck and say whatever they please. I enjoy opening a browser tab at work specifically to click around and watch three or four logical people post responses to illogical arguments and copied-and-pasted email forwards. I would even classify one of the more conservative posters as one of the most logical, and enjoy the opportunity to argue with him on certain subjects because at least he attempts to find facts to support his claims. Meanwhile, I grow more and more ashamed of the racism and religious discrimination that has always made my small town background something I try to hide.

As the election closes in (FINALLY!), I find myself liking Obama more and more each day. I was on the fence in the beginning, but I think the final nail in the I-might-be-a-Republican coffin was the addition of Palin into the mix. I realize that this race would likely be just as dirty if HRC was at the top of the ticket, but we would replace racism with sexism and the majority of the world might have been able to keep ignorant as to Palin’s existence. These are turbulent times, and when people are unsure of their futures, they will lash out against what supposedly threatens their way of life with little to no proof. I just wish that when political discussions move out of a person’s living room and are printed on newsprint that they would have roots in factual truths; not propaganda-filled email forwards from Joe the Plumber’s aunt’s cousin’s friend.