When the history of the music of the twenty first century is written its most dismal footnote is likely to be the life and work of Pitbull. With a name like that you half expect a group of grumpy Scandinavian teenagers releasing their angst through the medium of death metal. No such luck. Modern dance music sets a pretty high bar for witless misogynistic crap but the man who calls himself Pitbull has raised it with his current hit Hotel Room Service.

Here’s a sample of the lyric:

Put them fingers in your mouth

Uh open up your blouse and pull that g-string down south

Oooo! OK shawty,

1’s a company,

2’s a crowd,

And 3’s a party.

The song’s central conceit is that every “lady” who has the good fortune to see Mr Bull will immediately want to run up to the nearest hotel room with him along with three of her friends. What he does not appreciate is that presented with his music and videos every jury on Earth is certain to acquit anyone who bludgeoned him to death and stuck his genitals in his mouth. Though it’s probably best to get an opinion from a lawyer on that.

Some dreadful impulse makes we watch a video chart show at least once a week. Maybe it’ll get me a few years off my time in Purgatory. If you record it fifteen minutes is easily long enough to skim through a three hour programme in search of something vaguely interesting. Mostly it’s a procession of identikit dance acts. Mr Bull’s video was shown around breakfast time on a Sunday morning and had all the narrative conventions of a porn film. Mr Bull gets off with the hotel receptionist and she invites her mates up to his room to frolic in their underwear. His girlfriend is onto his tricks and bursts into the room with a TV crew but Mr Bull chases her off and gets down to business with the receptionist and her pals. There’s a happy romantic ending when he visits his girlfriend who is still slightly cross but forgives him because he’s just won the world record for being the world’s biggest arsehole. That was my reading of it.

Here is a piece of work so vile and offensive on every level that you almost wish Mary Whitehouse was still around to complain about it. Teenage boys are given the message that it’s quite reasonable to pressurise young women into this sort of stunt. Young women are told that it’s the done thing if you want to hang out with the alpha male. Popular culture is suffused with the values of the porn industry and a man who does an outstanding impersonation of an obnoxious gobshite gets rich. Instead it gets shown on national TV for kids to watch while having their breakfast on Sunday.

Oh yeah and there was Shakira. In the plug for her video she explained how she decided to perform in a cage because she wanted to show how a woman would fight like an animal to protect her liberty and rights. Pressure of time prevented her from explaining what message the lycra bikini was meant to convey.

That witless misogynistic crap bar is really high.