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Not in My House … But Fine in Yours


eminem.JPGEvery now and then, celebrities reveal some pretty interesting double standards. As in, the racy and profane material that they’re more than willing to foist upon the rest of us is actually off limits when it comes to their own children and their own homes.

In 2007, for instance, Madonna—who’s built a career on transgressing cultural mores when it comes to sex and sensuality—vented about her frustration with her then 10-year-old daughter Lourdes’ wardrobe choices. “My daughter is going through a phase of wearing jeans so tight she can’t bend her knees in them. I have [to] go [to] her and say, ‘Can’t you wear something else?” At home, at least, parenthood had transformed the Material Girl into something more akin to the Conservative Girl.

And then there’s Eminem. If you’ve ever listened to much of this Detroit rapper’s material, you might assume that someone with such an angry, foul mouth talked that way all the time.

But apparently that’s not the case.

In a recent 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, Eminem said he makes a distinction between what he says in his music and what he says at home. The admission came in the context of a question from Cooper about whether Eminem felt a sense of responsibility for the profanity on his albums: “And for some parent who’s listening to this, and says, ‘Well, you know, my kid hears this, hears you calling somebody a b–ch, or using the f-word, and starts to use it themselves.’ Do you feel a sense of responsibility?”

Eminem immediately turned the notion of responsibility back on parents—and then opened up about his own parental standards in this area:

"I feel like it's your job to parent them. If you're the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I'm a parent. I have daughters. I mean, how would I really sound, as a person, like, walkin' around my house, you know, 'B--ch pick this up.' You know what I mean? Like, I don't cuss. ... Profanity around my house, no. But this is music, this is my art, this is what I do." 

Did you catch that? Eminem understands that the foul language he spits on his albums is inappropriate for teens (and everyone else, we would argue). As for taking responsibility for the influence of his “art,” well, that’s our problem, he says, not his.

I actually agree with Eminem here, to a point. It is a parent’s responsibility to be engaged, to set limits, to say, “Not in our house” when it comes to inappropriate material.

That said, it’s maddeningly frustrating that someone like Eminem apparently knows that some things should be out of bounds for children—and then pumps his albums full of exactly that kind of profane content in the name of art and furthering his career.