Kerre Woodham: It's a rap: Eminem isn't all bad

COMMENT

When my daughter asked me, three or four years ago, if I could buy her Eminem's first album, I didn't even have to think about it.

There was no way we were having the works of a mysogynist, homophobic foul-mouthed rapper in this house.

Her pleas failed to move me. One day, when she owned her own stereo and was paying for her own electricity and was actually old enough to buy restricted music, then she could buy whatever CDs she wanted. Until that time, under this roof, etc, etc. If you're a parent, you know the drill.

But of course, Eminem was on the radio, all day, every day. There was little I could do about that. And although the worst of the language was bleeped out on the commercial stations, you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to work out what came between the 'f' and the 'ck'.

Besides, it wasn't so much the language I was worried about. It was the nasty message that came through in the lyrics. But gradually, as I heard more of Eminem through constant exposure via the radio, I realised the man was a genius. His rapping was cruel, and vicious and negative because he was talking about his world.

When he sneers at the groupies in Superman - "Never loved you enough to trust you, We just met and I just f...d you, I do know one thing though, Bitches, they come they go" - he's telling it like it is.

Maybe feminists should address the behaviour of the sisterhood before they go condemning Eminem. Now the music retail chain, the CD and Video Store, has said that it will advise people against buying Eminem's latest album. For those who choose to go against their advice, they will donate $6 to Women's Refuge and youth suicide prevention groups to mitigate the damage caused by Eminem's vileness.

I would prefer to see this as the initiative of a good man rather than a canny business operator. I accept there are people who are genuinely appalled at the messages in modern music. But what about all the other rappers and hard core metal bands who are just as nasty, and just as negative?

What's the CD and Video Store going to do about them? If we want to take it to the nth degree, I've always been disturbed by the message in Grease, that perennial favourite of young girls the world over. The message that comes through loud and clear from this musical is the nice girls finish last. From the time Olivia Newton-John, in an alarming PVC catsuit struts towards a gibbering John Travolta, who literally falls to his knees, it's clear that rapacious sluts will always win out over nice girls.

Now really, if we're going to take a high moral stand, is that the sort of message we want to give our prepubescents? And how about these for lyrics: "Wouldn't one think that any woman who touched him, Could lick the arse of a sick hangman?" That's a line from Catullus' Poem 97 and there's way worse than that, which I'll spare you as it's a Sunday.

Catullus, the Roman poet, was the Eminem of his day. He too was brilliant, vicious, personal and brutal and yet he's acceptable because he's been dead 2000 years.

Back to Eminem though. I always thought he would be the victim of his own success and that has proved to be the case. He can't really go on about the misery and material and spiritual poverty of his world when he's richer than Croesus and a happy dad to his much-loved daughter. The secret of his success was his razor sharp wit, but also the fact that he was the genuine article - an angry, young, disaffected youth. Now he's not and his music doesn't ring as true.

My daughter, now a teenager, read the story of the CD and Video Store's attempt at censorship and sniffed that she didn't know why they were bothering - the new album was really disappointing and no one would buy it anyway.

I'm a late convert to Eminem. His first album, while it's foul and cruel and nasty, is a work of genius. The same day this story on the CD and Video Stores' stance came out, the lead item on both TV channels was footage of a young American soldier swearing at an Iraqi prisoner before shooting him in the head. Surely Eminem is just telling it like it is. The message is pretty ugly, but we shouldn't be shooting the messenger.



The jury went with their hearts



I am so very glad I wasn't one of the jury members in Nelson who had to decide on the fate of the dad who killed his baby girl.

The jury acquitted the man of both murder and manslaughter, despite being instructed not to let sympathy for the man and his family prejudice their decision. It was a fairly futile sort of an exhortation I'd have thought.

Who would not have felt compassion for young parents discovering that their much loved and wanted baby girl was at the developmental stage of a three-month old foetus and that's the way she was going to be forever?

To have gone through months of false hope, and dread, and fear and terror only to be told that your baby was so terribly, horribly damaged that she would never, ever have a life worth living would be devastating. The baby's father snapped after months of stress and freely admitted he had covered his baby's mouth and nose so that she would go to sleep and never wake up.

Technically, yes, he murdered his baby. And if the jury had been ruling on a technicality they would have found him guilty of murder. But a jury is not made up of medico-legal experts or dispassionate individuals there only to look at the letter of the law. Juries are made up of people like us, and they bring their experience, their hearts and minds to the courtroom with their brains. And they decided not to punish this family any further and acquitted him of murder and manslaughter.

Disability groups say the decision devalues disabled kids' lives, but I can't buy that.

There's a huge difference between the worthwhile fulfilling lives led by huge numbers of physically and mentally disabled people, and this baby. She was so far beyond disabled that she was as close to living death as you can be. The pathologist couldn't even be sure her father had caused the damage that killed her.

So the jury ignored the law and went with their hearts. I think they made the right decision, but I'm very glad I wasn't one of those who had to make it.

- THE HERALD ON SUNDAY