Did the Grammys embrace Eminem too greedily?

Did the Grammys embrace Eminem too greedily?

Did the Grammys embrace Eminem too greedily?

If you watched the Grammy awards last week, you saw, as I did, an incredibly offensive performance full of indefensible language. I’m not talking about Eminem, but about the man who introduced him, NARAS president Michael Greene.

I’m going to leave aside, for the moment, the debate about whether Eminem is a great artist or an opportunistic hatemonger — and, for that matter, about whether Elton John, who performed Eminem’s ”Stan” on the telecast and then embraced him, is a brave barrier breaker or an Uncle Tomming fashion victim. But I would like to point out that one reason Eminem’s critics tend to get so angry is that Eminem’s defenders do such a terrible job of making the pro- Em case. Never has this been more apparent than in Greene’s speech, which is worth examining closely for its cant and hypocrisy. To wit:

”People are mad, and people are talkin’, and that’s a good thing, because it’s through dialogue and debate that social discovery and progress can occur.”
This direct quote, as more than one person has pointed out, is a little like giving Hitler credit for bringing the discussion of anti- Semitism to the fore. It also assumes that there is, in fact, something to debate — that violence against women and gays is some sort of two sided issue that has just been waiting for the right artist to spark the conversation. The people who find Eminem’s use of the word ”fag” offensive don’t need him to give them a helpful shove toward social progress; they’re afraid he’s going to reverse the course of it.

”Music [is] a mirror of our culture, reflecting a dark and disturbing underbelly obscured from the view of most people of privilege — a militarized zone which is chronicled by the CNN of the inner city, rap and hip hop music.”
One of the weakest pro- Eminem arguments has always been that as an ”authentic” heart’s cry from a disenfranchised demographic, his work should be impervious to criticism — that it’s nobody’s place to attack someone who’s just keeping it real. I can’t imagine that Eminem himself is too fond of this defense — that as a working class inner city kid, he should have his work judged anthropologically rather than politically or artistically.

And by the way, let’s not get TOO comfortable with the notion that Eminem, a white Anglo Saxon heterosexual man, embodies some underrepresented urban minority. Aren’t there women and gay people — and for that matter, artists — who don’t get rich by purveying hate — in the very ”militarized zone” Greene mentions?

”We can’t edit out the art that makes us uncomfortable — remember, that’s what our parents tried to do to Elvis, the Stones, and the Beatles.”
In other words, the actual content of the progressivism that marked the 1960s and early 1970s — the march toward equal rights for women, African Americans, and gays — is not, in any way, different from the ”rebellion” being played out by Eminem’s fans. ”Tolerance” is apparently now an offensive, blanket orthodoxy, and lyrics that fight it are a breath of fresh air. And by the way, critics of Eminem aren’t trying to ”edit out” his art; they’re criticizing it, and Greene should be the first to understand that criticism does not equal censorship.

”We should genuinely be concerned about the younger kids, the latchkey kids who don’t have a relevant parental connection to help them understand what’s real and what’s shock theater.”
I wonder what Madonna and Melissa Etheridge, to name two working mothers who have defended Eminem, made of the notion that this is THEIR fault. Yeah, that’s the problem — working mothers who leave their kids alone and aren’t around to explain that Eminem is, in his own words, just clownin’.

Given that Greene had said minutes earlier that the Grammys weren’t here to ”defend” controversial art, buying into the definition of Eminem’s raps as ”shock theater” certainly sounded like a defense. Considering the Grammys’ shameless pimping of his appearance for the entire telecast (”And now we come to the most controversial award of the evening!” they crowed just before handing out Album of the Year), these pieties were nauseating. Really, with friends like Greene, who needs Eminenemies?