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[This Just In]

RANT
Won’t the real issues please stand up?

BY SUSAN RYAN-VOLLMAR

Enough already with the Elton John–Eminem Grammy-performance hysteria. Ever since the planned duet was made public February 9, national gay and lesbian advocacy groups have expressed outrage and dismay. Joan M. Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, issued a statement last weekend saying, “GLAAD is appalled that John would share a stage with Eminem, whose words and actions promote hate and violence against gays and lesbians.”

Spare me the Chicken Little rhetoric. If GLAAD and the other groups crying about Eminem and the Grammys wanted to focus on something truly damaging to our community, they would set their sights on the religious right’s attempts to establish a “defense of marriage” office in the White House — which, as we all know, is code for a “keep the queers from marrying” office.

There’s no question Eminem’s lyrics are offensive. But the venom raining down on John for his decision to perform with Eminem at the Grammys February 21 is much more so. How can anyone question a public persona who’s been out in one form or another since 1974? To be sure, homophobia is a recurrent theme in Eminem’s lyrics. But I can’t be the only listener of The Marshall Mathers LP who finds Eminem’s obsession with gay sex so thorough that he comes across as some kind of closet case. In “Ken Kaniff,” for example, he conjures up a scenario in which one man is getting sucked off by two others — both of whom are fantasizing about Eminem.

Eminem — whose personal woes have been detailed in the press almost as carefully as his homophobic lyrics — is a scrawny, pimply mess. But there’s no denying that he’s hugely talented. His ability to make words that share the same vowels sound as if they rhyme is pure genius. But, as countless others have pointed out, his obsessions with violence, misogyny, and homophobia diminish the overall effect. I bought his CD this summer after getting hooked on “The Real Slim Shady” and listened to it compulsively until I couldn’t take the trashy lyrics anymore. But which is worse? Eminem’s misguided — even wasted — talent? Or Bill Clinton’s?

Let’s keep something in mind: Eminem is just a rapper. It’s not as if he were a politician who’s worked to pass anti-gay laws. It’s not as if he were a criminal who beat a gay college student, tied him to a fence, and left him to die. And it’s not as if his songs will make anyone do any of the above. If music had that kind of an impact on its listeners, we’d all still have ’80s hair.

What we really need here is a good dose of perspective. Here’s a list (well, a partial list — we don’t have the space for a complete one) of those who get dissed on The Marshall Mathers LP, which has been nominated for four Grammys: record promoters (in “Steve Berman”); people who get offended by obscenities — “You want me to clean my lyrics up while the president gets his dick sucked?” — as well as parents who bring their young children to violent movies and let their “12-year-old girls” wear makeup (in “Who Knew”); “cocky Caucasians” (in “The Way I Am”); Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears (in “The Real Slim Shady”); his mother (in “Remember Me”); Christopher Reeves, ’N Sync, Jennifer Lopez, and Puff Daddy (in “I’m Back”); New Kids on the Block, groupies, distant relatives “who never bothered to call me until they saw me on TV,” and his in-laws (in “Marshall Mathers”); people who live in Detroit (in “Amityville”); Christian fundamentalists (in “Criminal”); and last, but not least, the fools who take song lyrics literally (in “Stan”).

That last one happens to be the tune Elton John and Eminem will perform together during the Grammys.

Ironic, isn’t it?