As a nation, we're becoming ever angrier. If you don't believe that, just drive around Albuquerque for a little while.
It won't be very long before you're the victim of at least one obscene gesture.
Our young people are no exception to this. Faced with ever-increasing pressure to perform at school, lacking real heroes and being told that all truth is relative, they have no role model to look to and no one to help lead them out of that anger.
So, who do young people turn to when looking for someone they can relate to? Sadly, a number of them are looking to a societal misfit called Marshall Bruce Mathers III, also known as Eminem, who sings the most hate-filled and abominable lyrics possible.
His biography on eminem.com says he was born in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to Detroit when he was 12. He switched schools every two or three months, which, not surprisingly, made it hard to make friends, graduate and stay out of trouble.
However, according to his biography, "rap ... became Eminem's solace. Battling schoolmates in the lunchroom brought joy to what was otherwise a painful existence. Although he would later drop out of school and land several minimum-wage-paying ... jobs, his musical focus remained constant."
Eminem released his first album in 1996 but was "thoroughly disappointed and hurt" by the negative response to the project. The Slim Shady album was "a project he made for himself." Recalling the making of the album, Eminem said "I made some s**t that I wanted to hear. The Slim Shady EP, I lashed out on everybody who talked s**t about me."
And he's never stopped lashing out. For example, the lyrics from one Eminem song read, "My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge, That'll stab you in the head whether you're a fag or lez, Or the homosex, hermaph or a trans-a-vest, Pants or dress - hate fags? The answer's `yes.'"
And in lyrics reflecting that an outwardly successful life is not a sign of inner peace, Eminem sings, "my life's like kind of what my wife's like - ****up after I beat her **** (expletive) every night."
Of course, words like that just reflect what happens when a troubled kid grows up and can't deal with the inner turmoil that's been raging inside him for years. Listen to this American "hero" describe in one of his "songs" his troubled childhood.
"At 13 I was putting shells in the gauge on my shelf, I used to get punked and bullied on the block, Till I cut a kitten's head off and stuck it in this kid's mailbox."
With lyrics such as that, it's maybe hardly surprising that when you even mention Eminem's name, you run the risk of evoking a torrent of emotion, either negative or positive, depending on your perspective.
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Interestingly, Albuquerque Journal writer Leanne Potts says all the controversy swirling around Eminem is missing an important point: that as disgusting as the lyrics of his music are, he is nonetheless still singing about a world that really exists. True, Leanne. But many things occur regularly in our world that we would nonetheless never think of singing about.
Potts writes, "(Eminem's) a realist. And the violence he sings about was happening long before he crawled out of a Michigan trailer park. Like it or not, he is telling us something we truly don't want to hear: that there is an underclass of stupid, mean people out there who think Em is da bomb and gays need to die ... It's these people I'm worried about, not Eminem. Even if we shut him up, the darkness he sings about is still there."
However, gay advocate John Aravosis hit the nail on the head when he wrote in a recent column, "The point is that when asked about the potential for your work to lead to violence, responsible people should make it very clear immediately that they of course repudiate such violence. Eminem, however, has done no such thing - and the deafening silence is quite telling."
That's because Eminem feels no responsibility at all for possible effects of his songs upon listeners, neither does he feel obligated to act in any form of socially responsible manner. In an interview published on www.elitepremier.co.uk, he was asked how he feels about kids looking up to him. His answer was revealing.
"I'm no role model, and I don't want to be," he said. "You either get me, or you don't. But I don't care if you don't."
So what's the answer to the Eminem problem? It's not to ignore this troubled young man and hope he'll go away. He won't. As cultural conservatives, we need to reach - as Potts put it - this "scary world of undereducated, underemployed, frustrated people" with the message of Jesus Christ and moral absolutism.
Unlike Eminem's songs of hate and despair, ours is a message of hope. We just need to persuade those who need that message to give it - and not Eminem - a chance.
