My little sister's birthday, she'll remember me
For a gift I had ten of my boys take her virginity
("Mmm-mm-mmm!")
And bitches know me as a horny-ass freak
Their mother wasn't raped, I ate her pussy while she was 'sleep
Pissy-drunk, throwin' up in the urinal
("You fuckin' homo!")
That's what I said at my dad's funeral
-- "Amityville" (featuring rapper Bizarre)

MTV, which prides itself on running anti-violence public-service announcements, has embraced Eminem like no rap act in its history. The mighty music channel celebrated the new album's release with at least four separate Eminem specials. One was a biopic that gently painted Eminem as a wisecracking free spirit who beat the odds and did it all for his daughter. (No, really.) Another featured a sit-down with Loder, who asked Eminem about his gay-bashing, although not in a confrontational way. Instead Loder merely offered up an opportunity for Eminem to make nice. He declined. Instead, he told Loder that when he uses the word "faggot" it doesn't necessarily mean gay person, it means "sissy" and "asshole." Oh. "Do I really hate gay people or not? That's up for you to decide," said Eminem.

At least his producer and hip-hop guardian Dr. Dre was honest when Loder asked him about the gay-bashing on "The Marshall Mathers LP." Sneered Dre: "I don't really care about those kind of people."

In his Los Angeles Times review, Hilburn deducted half a star from his four-star "Marshall Mathers" review "because of the recurring homophobia." A nice gesture, although in the big picture it's rather comical. Why just half a star? And what about the woman hating that drips off the CD? (Eminem seems more interested in killing girls than fucking them.) Doesn't that constitute a deduction from the morals score card?

Entertainment Weekly tried to have it both ways as well. Declaring "Marshall Mathers" to be "the first great pop record of the 21st century," EW's final grade for the album included a D plus for "moral responsibility" and an A minus for "overall artistry," which of course begs the question of what "artistry" is. And if that's not a clear indication that lyrical content is no longer relevant to music criticism, what is?

Some bitch asked for my autograph
I called her a whore, spit beer in her face and laughed
I drop bombs like I was in Vietnam
All bitches is ho's, even my stinkin'-ass mom
-- "Under the Influence"

A handful of critics have managed to break free of the Eminem groupthink -- and they deserve credit. Christopher John Farley at Time, Renee Graham at the Boston Globe, Chris Vognar at the Dallas Morning News and Oliver Wang at SonicNet called Eminem on his horrendous, hateful lyrics. Yet none of them seemed willing to really pull the trigger and condemn the project outright.

Perhaps they remember what happened to Billboard editor Timothy White last year when he wrote a scathing attack on "The Slim Shady LP," connecting the dots between the rapper's misogynistic rants and the rise of spousal abuse. "If you seek to play a leadership role in making money by exploiting the world's misery, the music industry remains an easy place to start," White wrote. The reaction? The music press looked at him as if he had three heads, with the deep thinkers at New Times LA so busy calling him names they forgot to actually read his column. ("Timothy White ... publicly called for the CD to be banned," the paper wrote. He did no such thing.) Or look at what happened to Christina Aguilera when she questioned the playground bully:

Shit, Christina Aguilera better switch chairs with me
So I could sit next to Carson Daly and Fred Durst
And hear 'em argue over who she gave head to first
-- "The Real Slim Shady"

Aguilera, portrayed as a blowup doll in the song's video, is one of today's platinum, girl-next-door teen pop singers, Daly is the host of MTV's hugely popular "Total Request Live" show and Durst is the lead singer of the metal band Limp Bizkit. All agreed the line about her giving them head was untrue. So what set the rapper off? Turns out that last year Aguilera hosted a special on MTV and introduced Eminem's breakout clip from '99, "My Name Is." After the video she told her on-camera friends she'd heard Eminem was married to his longtime girlfriend, Kim (which he was), even though Eminem rapped about murdering her on record (which he did). "Don't let your guy disrespect you," Aguilera urged her young viewers. And for that common-sense message she has been slandered in a Top 40 song that MTV can't stop playing.

Did anybody come to her aid? Hardly. In fact, the Washington Post cheered on Eminem's attack: "We're all tired of pop moppets like Spears and Aguilera, and he obliges us by slurring them both."

(And just in case you care, both Durst and Daly assured MTV News they were not offended by the fact that a new hit song suggested they were getting blow jobs from a famous teen pop singer. Oh, good.)

By defending and celebrating the likes of Eminem while willingly turning a blind eye to his catchy message of hate, music critics continue to cheapen their profession. They're also lowering the bar to such depths that artists will soon have to crawl to get under it. Don't think Eminem won't try.

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