From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...: Pimp This Story

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Pimp This Story

June 01, 2006

A story out of Chicago today conveys the real meaning of the word "pimp," a meaning which many scribes, marketers and would-be hipsters blithely paper over.

A pimp who dreamed of one day airing his exploits on cable TV was instead sentenced Wednesday to more than 17 years in federal prison for adding two underage girls to his stable of south suburban trailer-park prostitutes. "I'm not a menace to society," David "Super Dave" Phillips stammered before he was slapped with the 210-month term. "I really don't deserve all this." Phillips, 38, admitted the two runaways from Aunt Martha's Group Home for Troubled Youth in Glenwood -- ages 14 and 16 -- joined another half-dozen prostitutes he kept in mobile homes in Lynwood and Sauk Village. Soon afterward, they were sent across the state line to turn tricks in Indiana.
...Phillips' mother, called to testify as a character witness, insisted her son is a "really good person." She knew about his prostitutes, but not that one was 14. Under cross-examination, Frankie Phillips said she also was aware her son beat his prostitutes -- and explained to the incredulous prosecutor that she wasn't particularly bothered by it. "I didn't see anyone who looked hurt, and they still talked about how much they loved him," Frankie Phillips said.

Authorities raiding the mobile homes found more than two dozen homemade videotapes showing scenes of Phillips presiding over his prostitutes at northwest Indiana truckstops, sipping from a "Super Dave"-emblazoned chalise and fanning himself with $100 bills. At one point he tells the camera, "This is my documentary on pimping," according to an FBI affidavit. Lynch described his client as an unabashed "braggart" aspiring to create his own version of popular cable TV documentaries such as "Pimps Up, Ho's Down." U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow rejected Phillips' request for the minimum five-year sentence. "You sold them into what is essentially a form of slavery," Lefkow said.

"Super Dave" Phillips is an S.O.B., in the truest sense of the word; and the glorification of pimpdom in popular culture had everything to do with his rotten personal choices.

You know it's gotten out of hand when vending machines in KFC fast food outlets across Canada are found to have stickers showing the trademarked Hello Kitty character being kicked by another cat, who is saying, "Pimp That Ho." KFC's owner, Priszm, removed the machines from their chicken joints nationwide after a parent discovered the stickers in one shop and then others, in Edmonton.

After running a "Pimp My Garden" contest replete with cute "Black Hoe" references from one reader, the Toronto Star got a deserved earful from readers.

I first reported on pimp- and ho-themed clothing for children and pets in September of 2004, an early installment in my blogging on the appropriation by so-called tastemakers of pimp and ho culture. In that post was a link to brandsonsale.com, referred to as "this site." As you'll see from my text, the company was then marketing a variety of adult and child pimp and ho costumes, including a "child ho" costume. That particular link in the post now leads to a more generic costumes-for-sale page at the company's site reflecting a broadened product line; however using their internal search engine, one finds that they still sell adult pimp costumes, adult ho costumes, kids pimp costumes, and for post-ironic animal lovers, a pimp suit dog costume. In a dazzling burst of moral propriety, however, they seem to have discontinued the "child ho" costume. Last month, a national furor of sorts developed after uber-blogger Matt Drudge rightly outed a company named pimpfants, of Portland, Oregon, with a simple picture and link on his site titled "Ho Clothes For Kiddies." Naturally, their server crashed temporarily, but they're back up - peddling the tasteful red with white trim "Jr. Pimp Squad Basketball Set"; a black with hot pink trim "Pimpfants Jersey T;" and a green "'Bling' Velour Hoody Set" for girls.

A sane voice on the whole pimp and ho marketing imperative comes from Portland rapper, poet and author Rochell D. Hart, a.k.a. Ro Deezy. She has a CD out titled "P.I.M.P. - Poetic Intelllectual Making Progress." More from nathanielturner.com.

P.I.M.P. also delves into the idea of a "reborn black woman," a black queen free from both the constraints of history and the current MTV hip-hop attitude toward black women as easy ho's or as shallow materialistic b******. In her track "Don't Wana Be" she states, "My inner spirit called out and demanded that I be more than the images I too often see/ because I don't wana be another booty-bouncin', loud-talkin' ghetto-unfabulous girl." Instead, Ro Deezy calls for a black woman who is more than a stereotype imposed by white America or black culture. Black men are also scrutinized. In "I Got a Bone to Pick," Hart attacks the glorified vision of gangsters, hustlers and pimps in black culture, stating that "to those who think a pager and a cell phone means having big things/ to those who think that waiting on a once-a-month county check is having a dream/ I got a bone to pick/...hustling on the block is not an accepted alternate to a 9-5, and that gun-toting rough-neck mentality is just a contribution to genocide."

The T-shirt I'm imagining might not sell well, but the thought matters: "Pimps Enslave." When you get right down to it, there is no profession which is more about the subjugation of women than pimping. That entertainment impressarios and childrens' clothing makers overtly glorify the pimp - and that the term is now used everywhere - demonstrates the ascendancy of corrosive moral relativism and the continued importance of seeking out the timeless, the beautiful and the good, which are thankfully still abundant.