We watched the clip together, and then she gave me an arch look.

"So," she said. "What do you think of that?"

"Well," I said. "Hmm."

It seemed like a trap. I searched her face for clues.

"You go first!" I said.

She shook her head. "I asked you, what did you think?"

"Um," I stuttered. "I, uh, think it's an, um, internal matter. Amongst you and your, um, peeps, I think you call them."

She pressed me, and I stammered through an awkward monologue about memes.

I said obviously the artists responsible for "Read a Book"—Bomani "D'Mite" Armah and Tyree Dillihay—were using satire to expose the ridiculousness of some of the memes currently in circulation among youth (and it's certainly not just black youths who are susceptible to them).

As a work of good old-fashioned satire I guess I liked it. I also liked how they used cartoons to expose the cartoonishness of some of the posturing we're supposed to take seriously.

As for the seeming irony some have pointed out in exhorting people to read "muh'fuckin books," there's no reason that reading books should be seen as a dainty activity relegated to rarefied circles of society. I adore Maya Angelou as much as the next guy, but we don't all need to talk like her. Frankly, I think she over-annunciates.

Reading first. Then elocution and oratory.

Why not say, "read a muh'fuckin book"? Kafka said "a book should be an ice-pick to break up the frozen sea within us." Reading is hardcore. Call it The Trial, or The muh'fuckin Trial, but read it.

Reading's as mind-altering and potentially life-changing as any drug. And thankfully, we live in an age when we can read a writer's work unexpurgated, in the idiom of his place and time. I'm not bothered overmuch by the profanity if it gets the point across.

There is a case to be made, of course, for toning it down. Every weekday morning right at seven a big group of black high schoolers makes its from the T to their school down the middle of our sleepy little street. The boys have got the thug thing going on, and every morning our quiet little neighborhood is wakened from slumber to the mating calls of Thugus urbanicus—hoots and hollers of "nikka!" "bitch!" and "muh'fucka!" with the occasional adjective tossed in (e.g., "bitch-ass bitch") for good measure.

Excessive, relentless profanity is a compulsive tic. Listening to some of these boys you'd think they had coprolalia, a form of Tourettes. But that may be the least of their troubles. The internalization of specific derogations, like the infamous N-word, and their incessant repetition may be a kind of empowerment on the one hand, but it mostly shows how meager are the resources for mastery and transcendence we've given them.

Compulsive cursing, when it is not evidence of a clinical condition, is a mark of limited vocabulary, and limited vocabulary is itself a mark of a limited mind, whose growth has been stunted more often than not by a paucity of opportunities for growth.

So while cursing is an integral and ever-present part of the language, and a useful part at that, it can certainly be taken too far. Can we cure the N-word epidemic amongst black youth by placing a moratorium on a word that is already taboo? Will dainty Emily Dickinson-style encouragements to read for moral edification and intellectual enhancement work in a subculture where language is as overheated and urgent as everyday experience?

Aside from the language of the clip—and I can verify, as can we all, that it truly captures the idiom of our day—I can't say anything about the other issues highlighted by D'Mite and Dillihay, many having to do with hygiene amongst African-American men. If deodorant use is really an issue or not, I wouldn't know. (African-American men of my acquaintance have tended to be rather meticulously groomed.)

But what K. objected to seems to be not so much the truth of the stereotypes lampooned in the clip anyway, but the very lampooning of them. She told me she thought—as Jesse Jackson, who has spoken out against the video, does—that the media should accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative.

It's like when you come from a scrupulously respectable family, but there's that one bad seed. And he's all the time raising hell and making headlines. And he's all the rest of the world knows about your clan. I mean, imagine what Osama bin Laden's brothers and sisters must go through at all those chichi cocktail parties they attend. They roll their eyes, cluck their tongues, and say, "Remember: not all bin Ladens are Osama bin Ladens."

It's like that. Or if your ancestors were from Kazakhstan, and when people find out, all they can talk about is how they loved the movie Borat.

Thug Culture is not representative of African-American Culture on the whole.  But Thugs got the bling. Even if Thug Culture is incidental, not elemental to African-American experience, it's sure a sight bit sexier than Cosby. It's outlaw. It's godless, glitzy, hedonistic. In an age of geriatric rebels, Gangsta Rap is the new Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll. Taken to the nth degree and broadcast 24-7 into every household in the nation.

Do Gangsta Rap and Thug Culture reinforce incendiary stereotypes of black sexuality, the threat of libidinal lawlessness unleashed? Of course. It's only rock-n-roll, which has always trafficked in the unbridled Id. It's certainly not the only subculture where you're seeing the decadence of the present age on glorious display. But, again, black history and culture has certain elements to it that make it uniquely appealing as a repository of American Id.

Are some African-Americans sick of serving as white America's Id? I think the argument could be made.

What K. said bothered her was that black people who had once had the negative stereotypes foisted upon them were now seemingly choosing to personify these noxious stereotypes on their own.

But youth will always take the most obnoxious stereotypes thrown at them and choose them to base their social identity on. That's youth. Charming, I know. Particularly in a society that elevates obnoxious self-expression to an art.

The problem is that the forms of rebellious self-expression, as they become more extreme (which they inevitably must for the logic of rebellion to play itself out), also become more dangerous and indelible. To identify as Thug is a potentially life-long commitment. I mean, when you're dealing with a $60 billion a year penal industry, that ups the ante immeasurably for antisocial behavior. And Thug Culture is the proud antithesis of all current, if quaint and antiquated, iterations of accepted social manners and mores.

Identifying as Thug crosses racial bounds, of course. It's a social identity that has as much to do with economics as ethnicities.

The old Industrial-era bosses used to bring in all black crews as scabs when their white crews would strike. The racial enmity this caused confused the class issues and worked to the advantage of the old Captains of Industry.

If reading a few muh'fuckin books will clarify things for those in the crosshairs of our current class war, I'm all for it.