I had never really heard of Tyler until the NME gave him a hard sell a couple of weeks ago. I don't buy the magazine any more, obviously, as I'm 20 years too old for it and it's garbage. But I am old enough to remember the NME taking Happy Mondays to task for their homophobia, and Morrissey for his dodgy lyrics about racial integration. Hip-hop acts were also regularly quizzed about the homophobia and sexism in their lyrics, although unlike white indie-rock acts, they didnt rely on NME for their coverage, and so they generally seemed less bothered.
I remember a turning point around the time of Eminem. Steven Wells, the late, great journo who had written the Happy Mondays piece, wrote a piece on Eminem, dismissing the homophobia as 'just a larf, innit'. He was being a little sarcastic, but it still struck me as letting him off the hook.
I don't think that music should be parsed through some kind of PC machine to ensure it is inoffensive, but having a go at women or gays is the laziest, dumbest form of controv-seeking. If nothing else, the uniform response from right thinking people to Tyler's comments should be 'Grow the fuck up'.