Sir, - Recently, I was innocently conned by my seven-yearold son into buying a CD by Eminem, a rapper whom he had seen on MTV. I failed to notice a minuscule warning about explicit lyrics.
We put the CD on in the car and within a minute I had to press the eject button and confiscate it. Explicit lyrics indeed! This man's writings are full-blown hate messages to youngsters to feel cool about committing murder and date-rape and indulging in under-age, drug-induced sex. Added to this twisted cocktail are racist, sexist and xenophobic preachings.
Many parents are probably unaware of the material by this and other bands being peddled on Irish kids. It portrays a dysfunctional American male street-culture where girls and women are mere sex objects, referred to as "bitches", and where the gun the drugs the dress and the mouth win street-credibility.
Eminem's lyrics on tracks such as Kill You are deeply disturbing: they incite extreme sexual violence as an outlet for life's frustrations and disappointments. "Teenagers suicidal, come on suicidal, go hang your dad and do it," is a line from the song Bad Influence on Eminem's latest single. The gist of it is that the singer's life is so bad because of his parents that he feels like killing them and then committing suicide; he is clearly saying he is a bad influence and is asking young teenagers to murder and then commit suicide.
Here are some of the more printable lyrics from Role Model, from the album Slim Shady: "OK, I'm going to attempt to drown myself/ you can try this at home/ you can be just like me!/. . Follow me and do exactly what the song says:/ smoke weed, take pills, drop outa school, kill people and drink/. . Now follow me and do exactly what you see/ don't you wanna grow up to be just like me!/ I slap women and eat 'shrooms then OD. . ."
This is mild stuff compared with some of Eminem's other material - and he is only one among many! Is it not time to ban material which incites hatred, murder, paedophilia, racism and sexism from Irish society? We have a law against incitement to hatred. Surely the authorities have power to seize offending material from record stores and to ban it from our TVs immediately.
Bleeps are just not good enough! - Yours, etc.,
Peter Burke, Upper Grattan Park, Greystones, Co Wicklow.