S. Samuel
Eminem recently spoken about the heat he has taken from media outlets and protest groups for his controversial lyrics and pointed to shows like "South Park" and "Family Guy" that, he says, are often overlooked.
Presented with the question of why he’s “picked on,” Em described the blurry line between his rhymes and television antics.
“I really don’t know,” he said in an interview. “There are other artists that have used the word ‘f*ggot’ in their work… So why, then, when I say it is it any different? Yeah, I have kinda always wondered that. Why is it different when I’m saying it? Let’s say if I say something f*cked up about Christopher Reeve, you know what I mean? Just something totally off-the-cuff. That’s really f*cked up, but how is it any different than what ‘South Park’ is doing? Or ‘Family Guy?’ I’ve always kinda felt, like, why am I special? Why am I that person who’s always looked at and where the microscope comes out? I still, to this day, don’t understand that. I guess it’s just that I get a lot of attention, I don’t know! It’s very hard to say. I guess that maybe when I speak, I seem to draw the flies.” (Metro Times)
Em is known for stirring up controversy with activist groups and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
This week the FCC decided that it would not punish a Pueblo, Colorado, radio station for airing a bleeped-out version of the wildly popular song “The Real Slim Shady” from The Marshall Mathers LP. The fuss started back in July 2000, when a prudish KKMG-FM listener complained to the FCC that even the lyrics on the edited song were “indecent.” After 11 months of painstaking analysis and repeated listens to “The Real Slim Shady” in the commission’s Washington headquarters, officials in the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau decided that the song was indecent, that KKMG-FM needed to be taught a lesson and that a fine of $7,000 seemed just about right. (Wired)
More recently, Em’s rhymes from Encore reportedly caused him to lose out on a marketing deal with Ford in 2005.
‘It just wasn’t Ford,’ a spokesman for the company said in response to the rapper’s hit, ‘A** Like That’. Ford said the lyrics, which include a plea to Gwen Stefani: ‘Will you pee-pee on me please?’ and the observation ‘Britney Spears‘ has shoulders like a man’, were ‘over the top’. (The Independent)
“South Park” is also known for targeting high profile entertainers, most recently, Kanye West.
or the second time in four weeks, the boys at “South Park” have had some fun with our pop-music icons. After mocking the Jonas Brothers‘ empire, this week it was Kanye West and his alleged over-sized ego that was under attack. Entitled “Fishsticks,” the episode’s plot is based entirely around West’s inability to get a joke. When West fails to see the humor, his natural assumption is that he was the target of the elementary school prank. This, despite the fact that the joke is sweeping the nation. (Los Angeles Times)
