Aside from sex, controversy sells. Bad-boy white rapper Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, has been the target of criticism by Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne Cheney, saying his lyrics “(advocate) raping and murdering his mother in one of his songs,” at one Senate hearing, according to the Drudge Report Web site.
True, Eminem’s lyrics give the impression of homophobia, but the Eminem and Elton John duet at last year’s Grammy awards show was not a massive front to redeem Eminem’s reputation with Elton John going along for the ride.
“I want to thank everybody who could look past the controversy and see the album for what it was and also for what it wasn’t,” he said when he won one of his four Grammys.
Eminem used the media to show that he really was not homophobic, and his figment of a character who is so easy to hate, Slim Shady, just raps about it. Eminem is not hideous, and his sex appeal tends to compensate for his often offensive lyrics. Here is one rapper who knows the power of his charisma and just how much he can push people’s buttons and get away with it.
There is zero proof to show that Eminem, or even “the real Slim Shady,” is misogynistic, violent or homophobic. Many people have bluffed like Eminem and did not get called on it, like the early ’90s rap group NWA and rapper Ice-T, who rapped about killing cops, only later withdrawing the song voluntarily after much public protest.
Consider a song from Eminem’s “Marshall Mathers LP” called “Kill You”: “You don’t wanna (expletive) with Shady, ’cause Shady will (expletive) kill you.”
If Eminem was really the violent and brutal rapper that Cheney claims him to be, he would have committed a murder that would have sent him to prison by now.
What happened to the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?”
Now, consider Cheney’s musical preference.
In one interview with Bob Garfield posted on radio station WNYC’s “On the Media” Web site, Cheney said that Faith Hill’s “Breathe” and U2’s “Beautiful Day” are good songs, and that is understandable. However, any clear-headed person, whose mind is free from blinding prejudice and anger, would know not to compare The Turtles to Wu-Tang, or Patsy Cline to Dead Kennedys. It is dubious that Cheney listens to various rappers enough to have any entitlement to call Eminem’s music good or bad, as she did earlier this month in a telecast interview on MSNBC.
Eminem has been called the Elvis Presley of our time, because just like Presley’s infamous “swangin’ ” hips, Eminem’s potty mouth is the object of media figures’ fingerpointing of corruption of the youth of America, or white America for that matter.
According to a recent Los Angeles Times commentary by author Crispin Sartwell: “Eminem has dedicated himself to embodying the repressed strangeness of white-bread American life.”
Eminem’s music relates to white suburban teens with “its addictions, its obsessions, its violence,” with the “authority of distance” from a black rapper’s point of view.
That said, why is Eminem maliciously targeted by various organizations for his brutal music’s success instead of those who make him the millionaire that he is?: the youth of America.
Some gay rights protesters shouted “Shame!” outside the Grammys.
The consumers should be “shamed,” if anybody, for their financial support.
Of course, one man is much easier to target than an entire nation of people.
Are these people bored with the on-going struggle with socioeconomic gaps?
But then again, major economic gaps are what make America, America.
“Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” has always been a part of American culture because it is controversial. America gets off on controversy.
It is not illegal for people to converse about something that concerns morality and ethics, which ultimately leads to self-realization.
Art is supposed to be controversial.
The song “Without Me” from “The Eminem Show” is right, because through his innocent, cute little-boy singing tone, “It’ll be so empty without me. Hum dei la la la …” comes the ominously present wake-up call for reality to middle America.
After all, our incendiary-natured American culture “would feel so empty” without the staple controversy of Eminem.