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People have trouble criticizing things they like. Fact of the matter, America is racist and if you don’t cater to racist you run the risk of “outrage” and “scandal”. Listen to the Vanilla Ice interview where he’s asked if he thinks it’s weird that he’s the face of rap…
Woke is an insult somehow, but listen to how cringe these unaware people sound.
Or in 1981-83 when this conversation happened hip-hop really was underground and limited to a handful of cities. There really wasn’t a ton of interest there at he time so the for profit business known as MTV chased down profitability.
Why do you think MTV should have aired the videos Bowie was finding interesting compared to the ones the larger audience was interested in?
This isn’t Bowie really saying “MTV”, he’s talking to America. Blues? Let’s let the racist Clapton represent that. Rock and Roll? Why Elvis Presley! Rap? Ice-Ice Baby!
It isn’t that MTV is the first to do this, it’s a consistent pattern of Americans taking from a culture and then sanitizing and whitewashing it for their own profit. Of course we can always blame profits. I’m sure setting up concentrations camps is profitable too.
He's asking Mark Goodman, one of the first VJ's, why MTV isn't playing the videos he sees on this channel in NYC (very likely "Music Box" is the channel) that is largely black artists. He isn't talking to America as a whole as in 1983, when this interview likely took place as he's wearing the outfit from his "Modern Love" era, much of America wouldn't have cable TV available let alone MTV.
Your whole second paragraph makes no sense in the light of the facts mentioned above. Bowie is literally asking one of the faces of MTV why they aren't playing hip-hop artists at a time when hip hop was still kind of obscure.