"Dead Presidents" could be anyone, but in "Without Me", he does refer to THIS guy by name:
And Moby? You can get stomped by Obie
You thirty-six year old baldheaded f--, b--- me
You don't know me, you're too old, let go
It's over, nobody listen to techno
Since Moby is a worthless Bush-bashing twirp, anyone who can tell him to go shove it with THAT kind of directness has my respect. Hey Eninem, go for it, beat the crap out of this pantsy the next time you see him!
After learning that Ricky Martin was going to perform at one of Bush's inaugural balls, Moby wrote in his blog that he would never work with Martin unless he admitted that Bush was the antichrist.
On the other hand, as I wrote in an earlier thread, Eminem saying that he wishes the President dead is not an indication of anti-Bushism as much as it is that he is striving to say something that will upset people enough to complain.
This constant search for controversy is an Eminem trademark. For instance, in his track "Who Knew" from The Marshall Mathers LP, in a profane stream-of-thought spew expressing how he couldn't have predicted his success or the influence that he would be credited with wielding, he goes far out of his way to make fun of the circumstances leading to the paralyzing of Christopher Reeve and the death of Sonny Bono:
Does anyone think Marshall Mathers had anything against either figure? It's impossible to know, but it's more likely that he just was saying something outrageous for outrageousness' sake.
Skibbedy-be-bop, a-Christopher Reeves [sic]
Sonny Bono, skis, horses, and hittin' some trees (HEY!)
Notable in the lyrics for that very same track is this line about "The President":
(Oh my God! Oh my God!) I'm sorry, there must be a mix-up
You want me to fix up lyrics while the President gets his d--- s-cked?
Mathers is probably delighted at the attention that this is getting, and I wouldn't be surprised if this leak of an unreleased track was orchestrated by record company execs. Don't count out the possibility that an additional track addressing this controversy will be added to his next CD, with sentiments similar to those of another part of the Mathers LP track noted above:
How many retards'll listen to me
and run up in the school shootin when they're pissed at a teach
-er, her, him, is it you is it them?
"Wasn't me, Slim Shady said to do it again!"
Damn! How much damage can you do with a pen?
I don't own an Eminem CD, and although his heartfelt "Lose Yourself" is one of the best singles of this young millennium, I don't go out of my way to listen to him. But when I watched his performance on the Grammy Awards with Elton John two years ago out of pure curiosity (I wondered, frankly, if John would sabotage the performance, as he did in a famous on-stage spat with Tina Turner), I gained a little respect for the guy for recording "Stan," the #1 single about an obsessed Eminem fan who tragically acts out in real life all the violent fictional fantasies of Em's breakthrough The Slim Shady LP in an attempt to get a letter back from his idol.
The message was clear to those who bothered to listen to the lyrics: only tragedy results from taking him seriously, and that he doesn't want anyone to, despite his I-don't-care-either-way swagger.
I hope you get to read this letter, I just hope it reaches you in time
before you hurt yourself, I think that you'll be doin just fine
if you relax a little, I'm glad I inspire you but Stan
why are you so mad? Try to understand, that I do want you as a fan
I just don't want you to do some crazy s---
I seen this one s--- on the news a couple weeks ago that made me sick
Some dude was drunk and drove his car over a bridge
and had his girlfriend in the trunk, and she was pregnant with his kid
and in the car they found a tape, but they didn't say who it was to
Come to think about, his name was.. it was you
Damn!