cam girls and rap identity

In Camgirls protest. In this article, a “legitimate pop culture critic” slums it in the top-ten crowd. Let’s not hold our breath for Eminem’s response.

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if you’re a web journalist, try not to piss off the people you plan to link to. Otherwise, your links are transformed from supporting evidence into destructive criticism.

Mieszkowski is guilty of exaggeration (and, oh, a little fabrication, it seems). Hornby fails to understand his subject. At first, it seems like he’s headed in the right direction, referring to P. Diddy or whatever he’s called:

…who these people are, and where they have been, remains a moot point, particularly since we know enough not to confuse the artist with his narrators.

But then he goes right ahead and confuses Marshall Mathers with Slim Shady. It’s a shame, because rappers are into some amazing stuff with the identity game. Obviously, Eminem does everything he can to confuse us about who he really is. The figure of the ‘artist’ is rapidly disappearing behind a series of increasingly fictional curtains. Each of the Wu-Tang members has at least five levels of nicknaming going on. What’s the point in saying that ‘RZA’ is Bobby Digital’s real name? But there’s even less point in saying the real character behind the music is Robert Diggs.

In both articles, the authors could have gone deeper into some interesting issues. What they did instead says more about the goals of their respective publications than it does about the issues they attempt to cover. Salon poses as the web know-it-all for the offline crowd, the New Yorker well, they seem to think that using ‘ontological’ and ‘Destiny’s Child’ in the same sentence counts as oh-so-witty cultural criticism. I’m sure four out of five Ivy-Leaguers agree.