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his peers.” The week before, Eminem had won three MTV Video Music Awards, in addition to the two Grammys and one MTV Video Music Award he’d won the year before. “This isn’t the first time,” Cheney said, “but Eminem is certainly, I think, the most extreme example of rock lyrics used to demean women, advocate violence against women and violence against gay people.” All the while, an unlikely rainbow coalition of gay, Christian, and women’s groups were doing their best to boycott Eminem and his album through letter, e-mail, and phone campaigns to his management office, record label, and the Grammy Association, who nominated The Marshall Mathers LP for four Grammys. They also protested outside his concerts on both coasts and in Europe.

Shady consequences: Eminem and his attorney during his sentencing hearing on weapons charges at Oakland County Circuit Court in Pontiac, Michigan, on June 28, 2001.

“Somebody called me during that time, around The Marshall Mathers LP, who is a homosexual,” recalls publicist Dennis Dennehy. “He’s with a website and he supports art that’s labeled obscene—Robert Mapplethorpe and other artists that Middle America find obscene. He called me to say that of all the controversial art he does support, he could not support Eminem. Yeah, you know, because it pissed him off. It’s fine to promote art that doesn’t piss you off, that pisses someone else off. But once it strikes a nerve, it’s a different story. You’ll defend something until it actually affects your world.”

To hip-hop fans, Eminem was different, but the harsh themes and violence in his music weren’t too terribly new. But the attention afforded him indicated a subtle racial prejudice. Eminem’s opponents, by singling him out, suggested that the same themes, as chronicled by black rappers, were somehow more acceptable. “I think it was about the messenger,” Sia Michel, Spin magazine’s editor in chief, says of the controversy surrounding The Marshall Mathers LP. “It was sort of this kind of weird racism, where it was like, ‘Oh, well, you know how those gangsta rappers are, they say lots of crazy shit.’ As if we don’t expect anything more from them. And then a couple of years later, the white guy comes out saying similar things and it’s like, totally shocking. This white, blond man is saying these things, we’re going to take umbrage at this. It is kind of racist, just assuming that Eminem should be any less violent or use any less offensive language than anybody else, simply because of his race. It was harder for people to stomach.”

“With Eminem’s Grammy nominations viewed as a seal of approval, many more people have stepped forward to voice their outrage,” read a call to arms released by the National Organization for Women (NOW) in early February 2001. “Young women, parents, people of all political persuasions are writing to NOW, asking what they can do. While Eminem continues to make lots of money for lots of people, he will most likely be everywhere. But we can certainly shame those who profit from and promote him and his music.” They did their best, outside of the Staples Center in Los Angeles on February 21, the day Eminem won three more Grammys and performed his most ambitious single, “Stan,” with Elton John singing the hook sampled from Dido’s ballad “Thank You.”

“While Eminem certainly has the freedom of speech to rap whatever he wants,” read a GLAAD public statement, “it is irresponsible for Universal/Interscope Records as a company to produce and promote such defamatory material that encourages violence and hatred. This is especially negligent when considering the market for this music has been seen to be adolescent males, the very group that statistically commits the most hate crimes.”

NOW must have been dismayed by Madonna’s open letter to the Los Angeles Times in defense of Eminem: “Since when is offensive language a reason for being unpopular? I find the language of George W. [Bush] much more offensive. I like the fact that Eminem is brash and angry and politically incorrect. At least he has an opinion. He’s stirring things up,