Volume 50, Number 17 · November 6, 2003
Imitation of Life
By Andrew O'Hagan
Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem
by Anthony Bozza
Crown, 278 pp., $23.00
Eminem "Talking": Marshall Mathers in His Own Words
by Chuck Weiner
Omnibus, 136 pp., $11.95 (paper)
Angry Blonde
by Eminem
Regan/HarperCollins, 148 pp., $14.95 (paper)
In government, honored spouses used to busy themselves opening garden fetes and visiting homes for the needy, but nowadays, especially in America, they are apt to assume immodest and thankless tasks, such as cleansing the entire culture of obscenity. Before their husbands took office, the last two vice-presidential wives, Tipper Gore and Lynne Cheney, made personal crusades of washing the music industry's mouth out with soap. Every kid is familiar with the Parental Advisory Sticker, sometimes known as the 'Tipper Sticker,' which warns parents of explicit lyrics contained in music products. Tipper Gore's cofounding in 1985 of the Parents' Music Resource Center, the lobby responsible for the sticker, caught the imagination of the American right in their general disgust with what Christians often call 'verbal pornography.' A few years on from that, Lynne Cheney took Tipper's homespun outrage and turned it into a form of censorship metaphysics: at a time when hate is something to be experienced and opposed at the glo-bal level, she found herself disgusted by rock lyrics which sell hatred to listeners.
Review, 5395 words
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