When you're not familiar with the music a subject is discussing, maybe ask them about it.
That would certainly have prevented this nonsense by Jessica M. Goldstein at THINK PROGRESS where she quotes dream hampton (a producer of SURVING R. Kelly):
Jessica Goldstein: What’s your sense of R. Kelly’s place in a conversation about
separating the artist from the art? Honestly I find the whole artist/art
thing to be a limiting way to talk about these issues, but with R.
Kelly, there are these songs that feel so removed from his behavior
(like “I Believe I Can Fly”), I can see how people struggle with the
idea of letting that music go, or with insisting it is inextricably
linked to R. Kelly’s violence. But also, I don’t know that it’s possible
to listen to that music and not think about these women. So I’m curious
where you come down on that, if it’s something you wrestle with at all.
dream hampton: Unlike a lot of the music journalists
in the series, I am here for a really raunchy, a literal song about
sex. I grew up loving Willie Jackson, and I learned about sex way too
young from Prince’s first three albums, where he was talking about
fucking incest, and had a whole song called “Head.” And they were very
literal. He’s a better songwriter than R. Kelly would ever be, but those
are really literal songs.
Willie Jackson?
Jessica, who the hell is Willie Jackson?
WTF?
You stupid idiot.
It's Millie Jackson.
A woman. A soul singer-songwriter. Jessica, your stupidity is on display.
If you didn't know who dream was talking about, you should have said so: "Who is this Willie?" She would have repeated "Millie Jackson" and you wouldn't look like the Whitebread Idiot that you are.
THINK PROGRESS, where Whiteness goes to calcify.