Morgan Wallen in August 2019. -

Ron Elkman / USA Today Network / Sip / SIPA

Should we exclude all racist speech from the media, ban extreme speeches, no longer invite their protagonists?

This debate, which agitated France in full rise of the National Front a few years ago, and which regularly returns to the front of the stage, has just found a new opportunity with what happened to Morgan Wallen, the king of the country accused of racism.

Morgan Wallen is a super country music star.

His track

Wasted on You

, for example, has been listened to over 23 million times on Spotify, and his latest album was number one on the Billboard 200 charts in the US for the past three weeks.

But Morgan Wallen also obviously uses the word "nigger" when he swears.

Returning from an eventful evening with his friends, he yells in the middle of the night: "Take care of that cat, nigger", to the attention of someone responsible for taking care of one of his friends, like the reported TMZ, who obtained video of a neighbor annoyed by the noise.

339% increase in sales

This racist insult had immediate professional consequences for him, since the singer of 27 years was suspended "for an indefinite period" by his record company and banned from the airwaves by hundreds of American radios, reports

Variety

.

Apple Music also removed it from its homepage and Spotify from its playlist of top country songs.

The distribution of his songs fell by 70% between February 2 and 3, the day after these revelations, reports Billboard.

But this professional rout paradoxically had a positive effect on its sales, which at the same time jumped by 339%.

What is called the Streisand effect: the singer and actress Barbara Streisand, to stop the dissemination of an aerial photograph of her private domain, had sued its author, but the publication of the procedure had resulted in its opposite effect, and the photo had spread even more widely. 

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Are there more discriminations today than before?

  • Music

  • Insult

  • Culture

  • Racism

  • Discrimination

  • Sale

  • Streaming

  • Disk