OPINION:
Eminem, also known as Marshall Mathers, also known as one rap world’s most violently, vulgar lyricists — and whitest — just dropped a surprise new album on the music community, accompanied by a video in which he makes a plea for gun reform. Also known as gun control.
And forever after, this will also be known as one of life’s biggest laughs because it’s hard to take seriously a guy who makes a living off selling violence as a form of art simultaneously then calling for an end to violence.
It’s rather like listening to a terrorist call for peace.
Or maybe even a jet-setting Hollywood bigwig preaching on climate change.
After all, Eminem did pen this, in “Low Down Dirty”: “You see this bullet hole in my neck? It’s self inflicted. … Brain size of a bread crumb, which drug will I end up dead from?”
And this, from “Kill You”: “Slut, you think I won’t choke no whore, ’til the vocal cords don’t work in her throat no more?” Also, from “Kill You”: “Oh, now he’s raping his own mother, abusing a whore, snorting coke, and we gave him the Rolling Stone cover? You [g-d—] right [b—.]”
And this, from “Kim”: “Don’t you get it [b—], no one can hear you? Now shut the [f—] up and get what’s coming to you. You were supposed to love me. Now bleed, [b—] bleed, bleed, bleed.” Embedded within the lyrics is the sound of a choking female.
And this, from “Criminal”: “My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge, that’ll stab you in the head.”
There are more, much worse, much more misogynist, anti-LGBTQ, and vicious in tone — but why go on. It’s obvious: Eminem is someone who makes his money appealing to the lowest common denominator of culture, pushing out the most disgusting messages he can find, and in the most violent, vulgar of manner.
But now he’s bringing the gun control?
“It’s 10:05 p.m. and the curtain starts to go up, and I’m already sweating, but I’m locked and loaded, for rapid fire spitting for all the concertgoers,” he sung, in a video posted on YouTube promoting his new album that portrays Las Vegas concert mass shooter Stephen Paddock in a drug-induced state, plotting his killings, the Detroit Free Press reported.
And he wraps the video with this — a card with the words, “When will this end? When enough people care.” Eminem then directs viewers to the voter registration site, vote.gov, and says, “Make your voice heard and help change gun laws in America.”
What an absurdity.
It helps, when trying to sell a message, if one’s words matches one’s actions. Thee but not me does not a good gun control message make. Especially when it comes by way of a promo for a new album called “Music To Be Murdered By.”
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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