December 20, 2017

"There’s some dissonance hearing you — in the space of a couple tracks — go from trying to be good-faith woke about race and politics to being rough about women."

"Do those poles just coexist more peacefully for you than they do for me?" — a question for Eminem (at NY Magazine). His answer:
They do, and how you think those things go together depends on what kind of fan of my music you are. Sometimes I’m trying to appease people who think, Man, I miss when Eminem was raw. But I’m not killing Kim on songs anymore.... I’ve grown and sometimes I want to reflect that — but when I’m writing, a line will pop in my head that’s so fucking ridiculous that it’s funny, and depending on the punch lines I need and the rhyme schemes in the song maybe I’ll use it. Those are the things I’m thinking about with some lyrics, almost before the actual meaning. There’s a song on the new album, “Nowhere Fast,” and I say, “I must have got you / In somewhat of a debacle / Because some stuff that’s awful / Really don’t mean nothing. There’s a lot of shit I say in jest / That is tough to swallow.” You know, there’s a book called Truly Tasteless Jokes; it’s all fucked up shit; it makes me laugh — and that kind of stuff is where my brain goes. I’m not saying I’ve never gone too far, but people shouldn’t be looking to me for political correctness.
The interview goes on to blab about how Eminem hates Trump, but mostly in the context of Eminem wanting Trump to talk back to him after he did that 4-minute freestyle rap about Trump.



Eminem lets us know that he's got lines that he's saving up for when Trump responds to him. Maybe it could rival the Cornel West/Ta-Nehisi Coates tweet-fight, but it looks like Trump is savvy enough to procure E's silence by acting like he doesn't hear a thing. The most interesting line about Trump is: "He’s made it acceptable for the white man to feel oppressed. I’m just calling bullshit bullshit: I actually don’t know if I can see why people who relate to me feel like they can relate to him."

Anyway, who cares that Eminem (or any big celebrity) doesn't like Trump? It's the norm, and frankly it is political correctness, in that it's going along with what the elite have signaled they expect you to do.

But I'm more interested to find out that "Truly Tasteless Jokes" — a book from 1982 — is Eminem's urtext. From the book's Wikipedia page:
[The book is arranged] into "timeless categories" including Helen Keller ("How did Helen Keller burn her fingers? Reading the waffle iron"), dead baby, Jewish, WASP, black, Polish, homosexual, and handicapped....

Historian Barbara Tuchman spoke of the "breakdown of decency and of standards of taste" in these "terribly tasteless, disgusting books," while professor John Hope Franklin said the books' success was "a sad testament to the taste of this country."... Critic Edward Rothstein... wrote, "...the telling of a joke brings into the light of society that which is hidden; it creates a marriage between the respectable and the unacceptable. Tasteless jokes...  result not in marriage, nor even in an affair, but in a reconnoiter somewhere in the shadows.... The tastelessness of these jokes - many of which have been told for generations - is their main point: Prejudice is mocked, distended to a ludicrous degree. The target of these outrageous and gross quips is the very pieties of society that apply such labels. They make us laugh at the pretense that such prejudices do not exist and at the respectable assertion that we are really all the same."

74 comments:

Oso Negro said...

Just another white boy who really wanted to be a negro.

Ken B said...

Is Eminem our most unimportant unblack intellectual?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Rap is crap.

GmagQcy said...

.... it became a series of books...
I bought them starting in 5th Grade at our schools book fairs!

rhhardin said...

Tasteless jokes, the good ones (Hellen Keller was good), are a fuck you to the rule of pieties.

The people who enjoy them aren't mocking the pretense that prejudices don't exist but the enforcers themselves.

Fernandinande said...

Black Woman Accuses Charlie Rose of Racism for Not Sexually Harassing Her
"...as he towered above us at a height over six feet tall, the women Charlie preferred and preyed upon—at least that I witnessed—were white. It was an environment that all but erased me, while simultaneously exploiting me as a black woman. …"

Churchy LaFemme: said...

It's kind of bizarre that he thinks a 71 year old man listens and responds to "freestyle rap". I'm "only" 57 and I'm not even sure what that means.

CJinPA said...

A white rapper who wants to be successful could not take any stance other than anti-Trump. Anti-white-racism. That is mandatory and non-negotiable.

Beth said...

I have been an Eminem fan. I'm a huge Trump supporter. I told dead baby jokes at church growing up in the 80s. It's nice to be free to enjoy so many random and contradictory things. How boring would it be otherwise?

AllenS said...

A good response from Trump would be a tweet: "Fuck off M&M"

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I hope Trump ignores him. What makes these a-holes think they are so special?

And fire Sessions.

Bob Boyd said...

Eminem is a businessman.

Luke Lea said...

Eminem was a lot like Muhammad. He began his career singing about peace and love but when nobody would listen went over to the dark side.

Darrell said...

I coined "rap is short for crap" back in the early 1980s.

Saint Croix said...

The target of these outrageous and gross quips is the very pieties of society that apply such labels.

Dead baby jokes are an attack on the liberals who love Roe v. Wade.

whitney said...

Once again, everyone underestimates Trump's intelligence. He is smart enough not to respond to Eminem. And it's hilarious for the rest of us

Bob Boyd said...

@Fernandistein

Show me on the doll where he didn't touch you.

Static Ping said...

I owned a Tasteless Jokes and it's related publication Gross Jokes when I was young. They very much have a "cross the line twice" vibe to them: they are so overwhelmingly offensive that they cannot be taken seriously. This is coming from someone whose ethnicity typically had an entire section dedicated to it.

The problem is society has gotten to the point where it is beyond parody. It is difficult to cross the line twice with people with no sense of humor or self-awareness.

Luke Lea said...

For a sample, here are a few I cribbed from Google Books Preview:

"Page 35
Ethnic Jokes - Variegated Why didn't the black man want to marry a Mexican? He
didn't want the kids to grow up too lazy to steal. -k Do you know about the world's
shortest books? Polish Wit and Wisdom Jewish Business Ethics Italian War
Heroes and Negroes I Have Met While Yachting ~)< How can you tell there's an
Irishman present at a cockflght? He enters a duck. How can you tell a Pole is
present? He bets on the duck. How can you tell an Italian is present? The duck
wins.

Standard ethnic stereotypes, nothing really viscious.

Michael K said...

When I was in high school a bunch oh my friends were Polish and told Polish jokes.

Get over yourself.

Rob said...

Rhyming “debacle” with “awful” and “swallow” isn’t a rhyme scheme, it’s a fucking travesty. Death to all rappers!

Nonapod said...

but mostly in the context of Eminem wanting Trump to talk back to him

That's a little pathetic. "Please pay attention to me!". It seems someone is a bit jelly. After all, Eminem made his career by being somewhat of a provocateur, insulting various celebrities in colorful and humorous ways. In the parlance of our times, some of Eminem's success is due to him basically being a Troll. Of course Trump has done and is doing that too, but on a much grander scale.

And lets be honest here, Eminem hasn't really been part of the zeitgeist in at least 15 years. Sure, he still sells loads of albums, but at this point he's more or less a legacy act, his real time has past. So he wants to mix it up with Trump to boost his career. Trump isn't taking the bait, though.

Curious George said...

"AllenS said...
A good response from Trump would be a tweet: "Fuck off M&M""

No, better "I love M&Ms!"

Static Ping said...

"He’s made it acceptable for the white man to feel oppressed."

Given that a good portion of Eminem's catalog is about him being mistreated and/or lashing out because he perceives himself as mistreated, the irony is thick.

On a more general level, when society decides to give victimhood an elevated status, you get more victims. This was all obvious and predictable. Furthermore, when you decide that certain people are not allowed to be victims, even when they clearly are victims and are being actively oppressed, it makes it pretty obvious that the game is rigged and there is no point in playing along anymore.

robother said...

A white rapper who adopts the name of a popular candy? WTF? Is it the chocolate inside? The melts in your mouth, not in your hands? A sad testament to the decline of our culture indeed. Or, to put it more pithily: "Sad!"

tcrosse said...

No, better "I love M&Ms!"

Just the brown ones, please.

Wilbur said...

"A white rapper who wants to be successful could not take any stance other than anti-Trump. Anti-white-racism. That is mandatory and non-negotiable."

Kid Rock may take issue with you.

Eminem is one of the few haters that Trump can hurt most by ignoring him.

Wilbur said...

I grew up in a community with a carload of ethnic coal and zinc miners, or their descendants. Nobody laughed harder or told more Polack jokes than the Polacks.

MacMacConnell said...

I tell Irish jokes all the time. I have a lot of Italian clients who tend to be "Ball Busters", they tell me Irish jokes. I respond with Guido jokes, if you don't respond with "Ball Busting" they don't respect you or trust you.

Static Ping said...

Let me also note that the Tasteless Jokes books had a section in the back titled Jokes Too Tasteless to Tell or something along those lines. They were jokes that would have fit in the normal categories, but they were so extremely offensive that they were relegated to the back with a warning. I do remember some of them and they were the type of jokes that would start fights and/or render one unemployable, though some of them crossed the line twice and then crossed the line twice again. You would laugh and be ashamed of yourself for doing so.

MAJMike said...

Just another self-important crapweasel.

SeanF said...

Michael K: When I was in high school a bunch oh my friends were Polish and told Polish jokes.

My daughter is adopted from China, and is in 8th grade. Apparently, they were telling jokes at school recently, and she told the "How long is a Chinese name" joke.

The substitute/intern teacher in the class told her it was racist.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Eminem is one of the few haters that Trump can hurt most by ignoring him.

Off course Eminem is angry that POTUS is ignoring him. By not responding he is stating that he thinks Eminem is less relevant than Rosie O'Donnell. It is absolutely hilarious.

California Snow said...

"How did Helen Keller burn her fingers? Reading the waffle iron"

I don't care who you are. That right there is funny.

Carol said...

Ah, 1982. Come to think of it, that time was the zenith of individual freedom, socially and legally. Victorianism was long dead and gone, Freudianism was reduced to a joke, the Sixties had loosed its grip, and PC was yet to come.

I was actually back in school at the time,too, but everyone was mellow.

Good times.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

By the way, how is it that Eminem is not appropriating black culture?

richlb said...

I own a copy of Truly Tasteless Jokes. It sits in the backseat of my car, and I'm always amused by who peruses it on a car ride, and who comments that they are horrified by its existence.

Freeman Hunt said...

I take it Eminem has some kind of work coming out, a new album or something. Yes, I'm sure he would like it if the President of the United States would help draw attention to him.

Gahrie said...

A thug with a heart and social consciousness.

Ann Althouse said...

"Rhyming “debacle” with “awful” and “swallow” isn’t a rhyme scheme, it’s a fucking travesty. Death to all rappers!"

"Awful" is the very first suggestion at rhymezone.com when you look for a rhyme for "debacle" (first because alphabetical, but look at the other options):

2 syllables:
awful, boggle, bottle, brothel, cackle, caudal, cobble, coddle, coggle, cycle, doddle, dottle, fauble, fauces, fossil, glottal, gobble, goggle, hobble, hopple, hostile, jackal, joggle, jostle, michael, model, models, mottle, nobble, noddle, novel, nozzle, plaza, popple, portal, pottle, propyl, quarrel, raucous, rocket, rotfl, saga, shackle, spackle, squabble, stopple, swaddle, tackle, throttle, toddle, toggle, tonsil, topple, twaddle, waddle, waffle, wattle, wobble

Blur your consonants and you can get a lot of rhymes. I'm no expert on how to do rap, but I'm guessing that the key is to sell it: If you believe it rhymes or can act like you do, it works.

Nothing really wrong with near rhymes based on assonance...

Ann Althouse said...

""Awful" is the very first suggestion at rhymezone.com when you look for a rhyme for "debacle" (first because alphabetical, but look at the other options):..."

I should say: when you look for a near rhyme.

The true rhymes are:

2 syllables:
-coccal, auquel, brockel, cockal, cockle, faucal, gockel, grockle, hockle, knochel, kochel, mochel, mockle, na cl, paucal, rockall, rockel, rock hill, schakel, schaukel, sparql, stockel, strockle, trauchle, trochal, yockel

3 syllables:
ichthyocol, iliacal, karakul

4 syllables:
gonococcal, meningococcal, pneumococcal, streptococcal

5 syllables:
enterococcal, staphylococcal

I think "rock hill" has the most potential, but "gonococcal" is a nice idea.

Rob said...

Definitely "gonococcal"!

robother said...

Tasteless Jokes could upgrade their brand by including the Aristocrats.

PackerBronco said...

Ah yes, Hellen Keller jokes: the staple of the 13-year old boy.

Q: Why was Helen Keller such a poor driver?
A: She was a woman.

Paul said...

Eminem who?

gerry said...

Rap is crap.

The "C" in rap is silent.

CJinPA said...

I was the first rapper to rhyme "cock" with "Glock."

Darrell said...

I take it Eminem has some kind of work coming out, a new album

Yeah. He just released a new album--Revival--and the bad news is that everyone says it stinks. Even the Guardian dissed the anti-Trump rant--and they think John Oliver is brillaint.

Rick.T. said...

Grade school in the 60's, the one we all enjoyed was: "How do you make a dead baby float?"

John henry said...

Before the web there were newsgroups.

One of my favorites was alt.tasteless also alt.jokes-tasteless

Good times.

President Trump had a midas tou h. He can make proggy heads explode by saying something but he can also get them to explode by saying nothing.

Eminem is just a whiney wannabe.

Drudge has a story that eminem uses grinder for gay dates.

Maybe they can hook him up with. Milky gluted/andrew Sullivan

John Henry

Earnest Prole said...

Run, don't walk, to buy or rent The Aristocrats, the 2005 documentary on the telling of a famous filthy joke. The bonus features are every bit as compelling as the film.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

McCabe - fired.

Strozk - fired.

Ohr - fired.

Sessions - useless swamp dweller - fired.

Darrell said...

I'm Eminem
And I'm here to rap
But first I must go
Take a crap
doooogh doos doos waap

RichardJohnson said...

Mike K
When I was in high school a bunch oh my friends were Polish and told Polish jokes. Get over yourself.

Similarly, Texas A&M people like to tell Aggie jokes. As a migrant to Texas, I found the UT/A&M jabs amusing, for two reasons. 1)Those who are willing to put in the work will get a good education at either school. 2)Many Texas families have a member that went to UT and another who went to A&M.

The best student in my engineering cohort was a female with a Polish surname. She took 20 minutes to do homework problems in class. The rest of us would take an hour or probably two- while working together.

M&M just wants attention. As others have commented, the best response is to ignore him.

Gahrie said...

"How do you make a dead baby float?"

I use rootbeer and two scoops of vanilla ice cream.

JMW Turner said...

In the back of my collection of books (natch) is a 35-year-old copy of "Totally Tasteless Jokes" ,which, incidentally, was written by a journaliste *woman*; who makes a great ironic show of covering her face in the bio pic. Many people obtained the vapors over this silly, but entertaining fore' into politically incorrect japes. There is a secret part of the human psychic that gets a thrill in dancing around the boundaries of societal decency.

tcrosse said...

Run, don't walk, to buy or rent The Aristocrats

Here's a highlight, Gilbert Gottfried telling the filthiest joke ever. NSFW, to say the least.

The Aristocrats

walter said...

"I’m not killing Kim on songs anymore"
Guy done growed up.
What did he want to happen to Melania?

It seems he's toned down his wigger dialect.
There's a comedian who talks about meeting Eminem a while back.
Said he talked more black than his black posse.
She claims it made her so nervous, she slipped switched to a fake Irish brogue to fit in.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Truly Tasteless Jokes, by Blanche Knott. I believe there were many volumes.

robother said...

"The Aristocrats" also works as a show business insider joke, providing context for The Silence of The Streeps.

Trumpit said...

We don't hate only Trump, we hate the Republican-controlled congress, and all Republicans who aid and abet them for that matter. Merry Christmas to all, including Muslims, and Jews, except for foul Republicans. I hope that the Great Tax Rape of 2017 of the poor and middle class by the Republican Congress can be reversed when they lose power. The fact that not a single Democrat voted for that tax-obscenity bill to fund rich people's greed and excesses at the expense of the rest of us is quite telling. The Republicans are the Grinch who stole Christmas, but unlike the Grinch, they are irredeemable.

President-Mom-Jeans said...

If the slim shady of 1999 saw that middle aged lesbian that he morphed into, he would have fucking killed himself.

Alternative comment: Ellen Degeneres really let herself go.

buwaya said...

Trumpit would like this analysis.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/12/what_might_civil_war_be_like.html

I don't entirely agree with the analysis, though they are correct that the model of the US breakdown is going to be much more like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 than The War Between the States of 1860.

But its no surprise that there is ever more of this Civil-War scale thinking going on.

That too is much more like 1936 - it is the mutual hatred of the people for other groups of the people that made that war. It was not a question of class or even economic interests. It was in-groups rejecting other in-groups, with extreme brutality.

walter said...

"The fact that not a single Democrat voted for that tax-obscenity bill to fund rich people's greed and excesses at the expense of the rest of us is quite telling. "

Well..it's telling alright.

Sebastian said...

"If you believe it rhymes or can act like you do, it works."

Yep. And if you believe it's poetry, and can sing like you do, it can earn you a Nobel.

John Nowak said...

The only rap album I have is MC Hawking, where someone use Dr. Hawking's artificial voice for lyrics like "the punk-ass bitches at MIT."

walter said...

Lou Reed would sometimes rhyme a word with the same word..he kinda had the attitude to make it work..though it still made me laugh.

buwaya said...

You know, I think the idea of a strong proletarian bias against "truly tasteless jokes" is a very American thing.

The equivalent is ancient and normal in Europe. Even 19th century British music-hall stuff could be quite unacceptable according to modern PC - and that was literally "Victorian"!

An old Spanish "Cuple" - a music-hall song, a standard of the genre actually, 19th century - "Vaselina" - vaseline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuTXg0cktys

Earnest Prole said...

The classic is Gershon Legman’s 1968 study Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor

Danno said...

Blogger Curious George said..."AllenS said...A good response from Trump would be a tweet: "Fuck off M&M"

"No, better "I love M&Ms!"

And I wash'em down with Diet Cokes!

chickelit said...

What garbage M&M spouts. Had to switch it off after just a minute.

Isn’t M&M the white kid who Clint Eastwood warned us about on that street corne in “Gran Torino”?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Anyway, who cares that Eminem (or any big celebrity) doesn't like Trump?

Those of us with enough common sense to realize that it was only Trump's "celebrity" status and endless quest for ever-greater celebrity that got him where he is do.

It's the norm, and frankly it is political correctness, in that it's going along with what the elite have signaled they expect you to do.

Right. Because a celebrity billionaire who puts his name on everything and covers all he's got in gold is really anything but elite. You must really hate this whole "money" and "economy" thing that the country runs on.

0_0 said...

Doesn't disrespect of women go with being fully woke?

John Clifford said...

Who goes to Emenim for advice or wisdom? The truly sad thing about him ANF his rant is that it shows just how stupid and uninformed he is.