A NYT columnist wonders about "Eminem’s endorsement, and the way he made it" and it makes me question whether Eminem did endorse Harris.

I'm reading "Could Eminem Snap Gen X Voters Back to Reality?" by Jessica Grose:

Obama casually rapping a few bars of “Lose Yourself” got a lot more attention than Eminem’s brief speech. But in this tight election that could be decided by a few swing states — including Michigan — I wonder if Eminem’s endorsement, and the way he made it, will be the most consequential one that Vice President Harris receives.

What was special about the way he made what Grose is calling his "endorsement"? Reading the transcript and rewatching the video, I realized that Eminem did not make an endorsement at all — not of a candidate anyway. What Eminem endorsed was freedom of speech. That's where he put his Michigan clout:

"So look I wrote down a few things I wanted to say...."

He's a wordsmith, and he tells us he wrote it down. That means these words really matter. This is text. It's been crafted.

"I'm here tonight for a couple of important reasons."

There will be 2 reasons stated. Let's find 2 reasons and not hallucinate additional reasons.

"As most of you know the city of Detroit and the whole state of Michigan mean a lot to me. And going into this election, the spotlight is on us more than ever, and I think it's important to use your voice, so I'm encouraging everybody to get out and vote, please."

Reason #1: Eminem is here to tell everybody to vote. That's not telling you who to vote for. And he wouldn't say "everybody" if he only wanted votes for Harris.

"I also think..."

He's moving on to the second reason.

"... that people shouldn't be afraid to express their opinions and I don't think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of [sic] what people will do if you make your opinion known."

Reason #2: Eminem wants freedom of speech in America. He's pushing back the power-seekers who would control and censor speech.

"I think vice president Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld."

He thinks. He doesn't know. And I don't know either. But he's expressing the thought as a hope. It could be understood as a subtle prod. He doesn't say he's voting for her. The only other thing he says is to introduce Barack Obama, who is supposedly "here to tell you much more about that." 

Now, back to the Times columnist Grose. Did she notice the precision of what Eminem said and did not say? 

I have been trying to figure out why so many Gen X white men, who were the creators of the culture I was ingesting as an ancient millennial teenager, are relatively conservative, when millennial white men are less so. And the shorthand I have come up with is that I want the male cultural legacy of the 1990s to be Kurt Cobain — who was angry, but also a feminist artistic genius who had a more fluid idea of masculinity....

Though Eminem has never been a Trump fan and endorsed Biden in 2020, I think his decades-long bona fides as a free speech champion matter. I’m old enough to remember that complaining about — and attempting to curb — Eminem’s lyrics used to be a bipartisan activity, one that infuriated him and that he found hypocritical.

Focusing on the idea that, actually, Harris, not Trump, is the candidate who will allow you to say and do what you want is a message that is perfectly tailored to the middle-aged, white audience that Harris needs to do a better job reaching....

I almost needed to diagram that last sentence. The subject is "focusing on the idea," an abstraction. Focusing on the idea.... is a message.... This sentence is a mess, perhaps because Grose is trying to be honest and knows that Eminem never said that "Harris, not Trump" is the better protector of freedom of speech.

Then there's the confusion of freedom to "say... what you want" and freedom to "do what you want." Who said anything about the freedom to do what you want? Not Eminem, whose songs speak— in the first person — about raping and murdering. 

And finally, speaking about free speech becomes a means to an end — a way to get those aging white guys who've had the gall to maintain non-fluid masculinity and not lived up to the promise of the dear young man who blew his brains out.