In 2010, Michelle Obama invited a rapper who calls himself Common to the White House for a delightful evening of poetry. Common’s lyrics include a metaphorical reference to how he wears his gun in “a black strap to make the cops run” and about “burning” George W. Bush. Common has also expressed support for Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Malcolm X, and convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. He is also an outspoken critic of interracial dating.

When certain outlets complained that it was a little, well, weird for such a person to be invited to the White House, they were mocked and dismissed as unhip and uptight. But the same scoffers seemed to have no such problems when their cohorts”€™ outraged screeching effectively shut down a 2003 poetry event sponsored by Laura Bush because it was scheduled to include passages from such undeniably unacceptable pimped-out cop-killing nigga thug gangstas as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

Barack Obama recently said that if he’s elected to a second term, he will perform lyrics by Atlanta rapper Young Jeezy, who was arrested in 2005 on suspicion of being involved in a gang shooting in Miami. (The charges were later dropped.)

Rapper Ice-T, AKA “The Original Gangster” and singer of the song “Cop Killer,” is a former member of the Crips, former weed dealer, former car-stereo thief, and one of the first rappers to explicitly mention LA gang culture in his lyrics. He has more recently switched sides to play a police detective on TV and now says that hip-hop music is what put Obama in the White House.

Egged on by the eternally flatulent Cenk Uygur, rapper Ice Cube recently said he thinks Obama is doing a good job. This is the same Ice Cube who came to fame as a lyricist and rapper for the ultraviolent LA rap crew N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) and afterwards had a solo musical career where he criticized his former bandmates for allowing “a white Jew tellin’ you what to,” rapped about performing “a home invasion point-blank on a Caucasian,” and released a charming ditty called “Cave Bitch” about how he would prefer not to have sexual intercourse with “stanky” white women.

Yet none of this has prevented Ice Cube from becoming a corporate ad spokesman and a movie star in wacky family comedies.

Ice Cube’s former partner in Niggaz Wit Attitudes, multi-million-selling producer Dr. Dre, who once rapped about “keepin’ the smile off the white face” and produced a record about how it was “time to rob and mob and break the white man off something lovely,” now does commercials for Hewlett-Packard and Chrysler.

How might one account for this odd and possibly unprecedented fusion of open lawlessness, pro-government sentiment, and mainstream acceptance? How to explain a cultural climate that turns convicted rapists into saints?

Some might argue that America has always had a fascination with outlaws. Still, I don’t remember Billy the Kid being invited to any of James Garfield’s presidential barbecues. Nor do I recall Bonnie and Clyde working with Herbert Hoover to “empower the youth.” I never saw John Dillinger hosting $40,000-a-plate fundraising dinners for FDR.

Come to think of it, I never saw Charles Manson on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. Has ABC ever produced An Aryan Brotherhood Halloween? When was the last time you saw a skinhead cracking up the cackling hens on The View? Did I miss the VH1 series where heavy-metal musicians who threatened to beat up Obama are made to live together in a beach house?

Double standards are by their very nature designed to keep people divided. It is clear that the government-media complex’s open-armed bear hug of racism and criminality apply to only a certain kind of racist criminality. And if Obama wins the election next month, I think this is cause for concern, whether or not this makes me an uptight cracker devil who needs a bullet in the dome.