Dahleen Glanton: Candace Owens, spare us your sanctimony over Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion

Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens were offended by rapper Cardi B’s performance during the Grammy Awards show last weekend. According to these right-wing pundits, her sexually explicit song, “WAP,” is an “attack on American values.”

According to Owens, the performance in which Cardi B and fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion entangled their bodies on a gigantic bed was a “lesbian sex scene being simulated on television.”

What a bunch of crock from two people who heaped praise on former first lady Melania Trump, a model who posed nude or wearing barely anything in photo shoots when she was around the age of these artists. There’s even one floating around of her nude body embracing another woman’s nude body on a couch.

Give me a break. This hypocritical tirade had nothing to do with American values. It was all about publicity — and as always, politics.

Owens has a new nighttime talk show on the conservative media site The Daily Wire, and she needs the hype. Carlson, the top-rated personality on Fox News, was just giving his buddy a boost.

There is no better way to drum up support for a new media venture than to invoke Cardi B’s name. She has never been known to back down from a challenge. After all, Cardi B will take publicity anywhere she can get it too.

So the Grammy-winning artist gave Owens exactly what she wanted — a heated Twitter fight in which the two women hurled insults that led to Owens threatening to sue over something Cardi B said about Owens’ husband.

The debate over raunchy rappers has been going on for decades. Haters always have had a problem with female artists using sexuality to promote their music. Tina Turner began pushing the envelope in the 1960s. Madonna has been doing it since the 1980s.

Everyone from Britney Spears to Lady Gaga to Beyoncé has been criticized for being too sexually explicit. But rappers like Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj have taken female sexuality to a whole new level. They embraced what used to be taboo and flipped it on its head.

Rather than allow male rappers to continue sexually exploiting women in their lyrics and videos, they took charge of the message and used these images as symbols of empowerment. It’s an evolution of American values that was long overdue.

If you want to know what “WAP” stands for, look it up. I can’t say it here.

Carlson insists that this genre of music is “intentionally trying to degrade our culture and hurt our children.”

Owens seems to think it’s an atrocity, given that public pressure forced the Quaker Oats Company and other brands to stop using on products stereotypical archetypes that African Americans have long found to be degrading.

“We’ve seen going to the supermarket as a traumatizing experience,” Owens said. “We lost Aunt Jemima last year. We lost Land O’Lakes butter last year. We lost Uncle Ben and his rice last year because everything is so traumatizing for children to look at.”

Let’s stop for a moment. If Owens and Carlson allow their children to watch Cardi B’s videos, then they need to take some parenting classes. Her music isn’t intended for children, nor is it intended for 50-somethings like Carlson.

It’s for young progressive adults who can decide for themselves what American values should be.

“What we were looking at last night,” Owens continued, “was a lesbian sex scene being simulated on television, and this is considered feminist. It’s iconic. It’s forward. It’s progressive. It’s the way the world is going … and if you don’t see that, it’s because you’re a bigot.”

She said “bigot,” the most hated word in the right’s vocabulary. And with that, we got a glimpse of what Owens will be doing for The Daily Wire.

Her sole purpose as far as the right is concerned is to say what they don’t have to guts to say publicly. She is their mouthpiece to attack African American values and talk down to Black people as if we are too dumb to understand what’s in our best interest.

Owens does not speak for African Americans. She speaks for white people, particularly those who believe that Black people are their own worst enemy.

In that regard, Owens is dangerous.

The Daily Wire is doing America great disservice by giving her an hour every week to trash African Americans in front of an audience that is overwhelmingly white and far right. The show will be filmed in Nashville but can be viewed all over the country.

Not only will Owens serve to suborn bigotry. She will give bigots a hood to hide under when they say and do harmful things. She will pat them on the back and say, “There, there, you’re not a bigot because I’m Black and I agree with you.”

Her “it’s not you, it’s them” message makes bigots feel better about themselves and gives them a boost of courage to keep on being bigoted.

This time, the bigotry was aimed at female rappers of color. In the past, we’ve seen her promote bigotry against victims such as George Floyd, who was killed by police. Every person of color is fair game for Owens.

She has trashed the entire Black Lives Matter movement. Yet we have rarely, if ever, heard her say anything negative about white people. Right-wing white people love that.

Reasonable people might ask, “Why would anyone listen to a Black woman who goes on Fox News and laments the loss of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben?”

She says her audience is “any person that doesn’t feel heard or feels misunderstood.”

Bigots should feel right at home there.