I picked up Bernie Goldberg's diatribe on cultural retardation at the local Jo Beth today and I must admit, it's much worse than it came across on The Daily Show, as bad as that was. He includes such non-entity straw men on the right like Michael Savage, who, though he is malicious, does not have the power to be malevolent and nobody really cares about him, and David Duke, who I was surprised to find was still alive, so invisible has he become. I searched, but was unable to find Andrew Dice Clay. On the left, as Mr. Stewart noted, is Barbara Streisand, Tim Robbins, Alec Baldwin, and any number of minor figures in the political dialogue who just so happen to be fairly minor figures in the cultural dialogue.
Then there are the fairly apolitical people like Ludacris, Eminem, and Courtney Love, whom he dismisses with a one word ad hominem attack much like those he decries through the rest of the book: "HO."
I read an article in the New York Times about a kid who got sent to a reducation camp for gay men in Memphis, one of my favorite cities in the world. I found it maddening because, aswholly ridiculous an idea as a reeducation camp for gay men may sound, the reporter made every effort to explain and understand how the parents felt to produce a typically even-handed story.
No such attempt at understanding is made by Mr. Goldberg. Especially of the mainstream culture. For him, it's all about vulgarity. For instance, as anyone who knows me fairly well knows, I'm a huge Eminem fan. Mr. Mathers was once quite raw, narcissistic, and immature in dealing with his anger and frustration. He fantasized about committing violence to women, esp. his ex wife and mother. He also included, as anyone who has actually cringed while listening to the segments, homoerotic fantasies about ICP having homoerotic fantasies about him.
As his albums have progressed, everyone seems to ignore the fact that, not only has he ditched much of the anger and frustration for scatology, he's matured and accepted the responsibility of fatherhood, he now raps about being co-dependent with Kim and protecting his daughter. He raps about how there are those in the music industry and bars who are craven and try to use him for sex and to make a cultural point (like Goldberg). His "Mosh" video made perhaps the most poingnant statement about why the powerless should oppose Bush. In the end, instead of violence he chose civic duty and exercising the right to vote.
In short, I'm not sure why Goldberg included Slim Shady ca. 1999 in his book and I have even more trouble understanding if he is making the point that Marshall Mathers is screwing America from the right or the left. It seems to me that Eminem increasingly represents what is right with America as he escapes from what is wrong with America.
I think the message Goldberg sends most is that the people who are hurting America the most are the people who don't understand what the culture is. When he started talking about the Bigot channel on the Daily Show, Stewart should have pointed out that bigotry still exists in America but the Ku Klux Klan now sells itself as Focus on the Family and other hate groups.
If we choose not to pay attention to those folks, we may all be forced to watch the Bigot Channel.
