Vibe.com, August 9th, 2006
The half-hour program, which airs on Saturdays at 12:30 pm, drew stimulus from a 2003 MTV Video Music Award appearance by the west coast rapper donning the red carpet with two black women tethered to animal restraints.
Recently, critics chided the music station for airing the episode, “Woofie Loves Snoop,” in a network time slot frequented by younger children. Yet prominent black voices like New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch are labeling the animated lampoon as a racial and misogynistic play on dehumanization.
In a column published this week, Crouch fired at the MTV airing, calling it an extension of sexist images portrayed in gangsta rap videos, promoted by the music network and broadcasted “around the world as 'real' black culture.”
The series, which recently completed an eight-episode trial run on the network's sister channel MTV2, animates celebrity and pop culture from the perspective of two stray dogs, Woofie and Buddy, voiced by Tracy Morgan and Jeffrey Ross, respectively.
In the episode, two bikinied women on leashes are walked uprightly into a pet shop before bowing into the dog's position and scratching themselves. The segment ends with a member of Snoop's entourage picking up excrements left by one of the women with a rubber glove.
In response to the public rebuke, MTV's president, Christina Norman - who is black - issued a statement this week defending the episode, which originally aired on July 1st.
"We certainly do not condone Snoop's actions and the goal was to take aim at that incident for its insensitivity and outrageousness," Norman said.
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