Folks, we've got a
broad coalition.
This from the incredibly well connected Juan Cole:
I don't know what Marshall Mathers's politics are. But I do know that they could be of consequence for the youth vote, and his loud pleas for everyone to vote may also have an impact at the margins (this election is about the margins).
That he is issuing a song, Mosh, which directly attacks Bush on the Iraq war may be a sign of the times:
Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell/
We gonna let him know/
Stomp, push, shove, mush, fuck Bush!
Until they bring our troops home . . .
Let the president answer on higher anarchy
Strap him with an AK-47, let him go fight his own war/
Let him impress daddy that way . . . No more blood for oil."
Flip Side:
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney and Bush ARE the Insane Clown Posse...
The themes of the lyrics above and the interview are interesting. Mathers obviously had a difficult time in his relations with his parents. His mother was only 15 when she had him St. Joseph, Missouri, and his father was absent. At one point his mother was suing him over his constant insults to and cursing of her. He once told her "You only loved me until I was 8 years old."
So it is interesting that he reads Bush as merely attempting to please a somewhat distant and perhaps often absent father. And he critiques Bush's attempt to impress the old man insofar as W. used other young men's lives up in the process, instead of strapping on an AK-47 himself. Eminem knows about packing heat, and was accused of pistol-whipping a rival from the rap group Insane Clown Posse. (Actually, this would be a good epithet for Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney and Bush).
The other interesting thing about the lyrics above is their invocation of the icon of lower middle class white identity, the "rebel yell." The appeal of the Confederate South for most of them lies not in its horrible race politics or slavery, but in a resistance to the intrusion of the Federal government into their lives.
Eminem cannily turns the Republicans' Southern Strategy against them, calling for a revolt against Bush policies by the guys Howard Dean referred to as having Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. (Although most listen to Country, some of the youngsters are Eminem fans.)...