Covers and Media References
In October 1994, the song was featured prominently in the opening scene of "Tasha", an early episode of the FOX police drama television series New York Undercover.
In the 1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the character Carlton Banks, played by Alfonso Ribeiro, says to Will that he had borrowed his Public Enemy tape when he went for a run and he sings the lines 'Get up, get, get, get down, 911 is a joke in yo town' in his own style. In 1995, English pop rock band Duran Duran covered "911 Is a Joke" on their Thank You album.
In 2009, The Washington Post ran a story discussing Public Enemy members' visit to a center for homeless and displaced youth. The article referred to the song "911 is a Joke", but due to a copy-editing error, "911" was printed as "9/11", which some readers took to be a reference to the September 11 attacks. A week later, the Post printed a correction.
In 2010, the TV show Community referenced the song in a throwaway line ("Flava Flav was right" after attempting to dial 911 and not getting a hold of anybody).
The song was used for commercials for the Comedy Central series Reno 911!, itself a parody of law enforcement shows such as Cops.
The song is played briefly in the American Dad! episode "Finances with Wolves".
Read more about this topic: 911 Is A Joke
Famous quotes containing the words covers and/or media:
“And so we ask for peace for the gods of our fathers, for the gods of our native land. It is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the same. We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us. What does it matter what practical systems we adopt in our search for the truth. Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.”
—Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (A.D. c. 340–402)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)