White-trash rap
“The final chapter in the story of hip hop is Eminem. Since his debut in 1995, the white rapper has come to dominate American music culture. … Growing up in a black neighborhood in Detroit, Eminem suffered all the damaging events of a ghetto upbringing, including parental separation, financial hardship and drug abuse. Although technically white trailer trash, he naturally took on all the characteristics of his black neighbors, emerging as a white negro. …
“Eminem perfected the art of rapping, gaining his credentials through regular battles at local freestyling competitions. Recognizing his lyrical gift, Dr. Dre, the celebrated producer and one-time member of NWA, took him on as a protege. And after one false start, Eminem’s first major release, ’The Real Slim Shady LP,’ pushed him into the hip hop superleague.
“As an explicit, trailer park comedy of intoxication, pornography and self-harm, its themes resonated with white American and British teenagers suffering from similar personality disorders. Eminem’s skill is in simultaneously treating his audience as co-conspirators and targets, and his three albums have unearthed a white middle America as problematic as the ghetto and as willfully destructive as any Schwarzenegger movie.”
—Nick Crowe, writing on “Rap’s last tape,” in the March issue of the American Prospect
Denying reality
“How long can supporters of abortion rights go on denying the distinct legal significance of unborn human life? Not any longer, if they want to save Roe v. Wade. …
“This is what happens when you deny reality. You have trouble making sense. You use words like ’injury’ and ’death,’ forgetting that you’ve refused to acknowledge the existence of anything capable of being injured or dying. …
“’If a state can put someone in jail for life because they took the life of an unborn child, then we’re clearly saying there is something very valuable there,’ [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein [California Democrat] warned. … She wasn’t endorsing that conclusion. She was reading aloud, with disapproval and alarm, the words of a Nebraska state senator. Guess what: There is something very valuable there. And if you can’t see it, we can’t hear you.”
—William Saletan, writing on “Face the Fetus,” March 29 in Slate at www.slate.com
Star quality
“In an age where nuance and sensitivity in language are valued more than resoluteness on the battlefield, it is not an easy thing to praise the career of General George S. Patton. Despite his spectacular victories in North Africa, Sicily and Europe, he left a depressing paper trail of grotesqueries about blacks, Jews, Asians, Mexicans, women — and almost anyone outside his WASPish class. …
“It won’t quite do to say that Patton’s outbursts (or his occasional vulgar antics) simply reflect a different age. … No, there was something altogether uncouth about Patton that both his admirers and detractors could agree was exceptional for the times. …
“Whatever we think of his outsized ego and dirty mouth, millions of Americans quite simply loved (and continue to love) George Patton. … It is the general’s star quality — a certain mystique surrounding what Patton did and stood for — that captures the popular imagination, despite, rather than because of, the often silly things he said.”
—Victor Davis Hanson, writing on “Footnotes to Greatness,” in the spring issue of the Claremont Review of Books
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