And the Loser is…
Eminem. Young adults don’t like being treated like children, told what to think. That’s why Eminem is so popular among the under-30 crowd. He has been a master at sensing out the prevailing rules of youth conduct and doing exactly the opposite of what propriety suggested. Even when America was gripped in the patriotic fervor immediately after 9/11, he was one of the first to tweak in the opposite direction, playing Bin Laden in his videos and releasing ?White America?.
So Eminem’s ?mosh? was completely incongruous. For months we’ve heard that ?young people vote Democrat?, and young voters have endured a more concerted campaign for their loyalties than perhaps ever before. So when Eminem decided to release a video encouraging young people to vote Democrat, it’s not as if he was bucking any trends. But not bucking trends is not good for Eminem’s rep. Eminem came across as preachy, sanctimonious, and way too serious — something he has been able to avoid in the past. Suddenly he’s like your dad, telling you to respect your grandpa (a ?human yacht?, even). Worse yet, the video is accompanied by pictures of cookie-cutter young people twitching along in listless unison like puppets or zombies. So, let me get this straight. Eminem is telling me to rise up like a mindless zombie, and and march along with all the other mindless zombies, and join Barbara Streisand’s party? Kids are fickle. That wasn’t smart.