Editor’s note: The following opinion piece contains language and lyrics that may be offensive to some readers.

Eminem, aka Slim Shady/Marshall Mathers, must be stopped. He has become a ubiquitous shadow across the face of popular culture. With the release of The Eminem Show scheduled for April – Slim Shady’s solo follow-up to the 15-million plus selling Marshall Mathers LP – we, as self respecting, politically correct citizens, must put the clamps on this misogynist … this homicidal monster that is planting wicked seeds in the fertile minds of today’s youth.

There is no time to spare. Eminem’s silver screen debut, titled 8 Mile, is also ready for mass consumption and slotted to hit theaters later this year. The Internet buzz has critics already praising the young demon’s performance. Considering that Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys), directed the film, don’t be surprised if easily swayed Academy voters honor the horrible waste of celluloid.

In light of the fact that his last release included song titles as profane as “Kill You” – which boasted lyrics as despicable as “Slut! You think I won’t choke no whore / Till her vocal chords don’t work in her throat no more.” It’s essential that we act now.

We must begin destroying his CDs en masse before this Eminem epidemic spreads like a Biblical plague. We must ban his entire catalog and prevent him from ever penning another atrocious tune. We must also probe the annals of pop music history and eliminate the distribution of past hymns of violence, especially those attacks in verse directed at non-male, non-heterosexual characters – figures consistently exploited by Eminem himself.

First, let us start with the inconspicuous suspects – scoundrels such as Willie Nelson who hide their hateful agendas behind a guise of Americana wholesomeness. “I Just Can’t Let You Say Goodbye” finds Nelson intoning the lines “the flesh around your throat is pale / indented by my fingernails” – with the emotional gravity of a bonafide psychopath. Perhaps Nelson is the man responsible for inspiring Eminem to explore similar depths of violent depiction such as “’97 Bonnie and Clyde,” wherein Eminem details the killing of his wife in the presence of his young daughter. All Nelson’s records should be set ablaze – from “Always on My Mind” to “On the Road Again” – who knows what darkness is lurking in the subtext.

And his buddy, the venerable Johnny Cash, I’m on to him, too. “First time I shot her / I shot her in the side / Hard to watch her suffer / But with the second shot she died,” (“Delia’s Gone”). In fact, I think country music has always had it in for the opposite sex – ever since the beginning when Jimmie Rodger, “The Father of Country Music,” first brought the genre national attention in the 1920s with recordings such as “Pistol Packin’ Papa.” “I’m a pistol packin’ papa, and when I walk down the street / You can hear those mamas shoutin: ‘don’t turn your guns on me.'” The perfect evil blueprint for 1990s hoodlums such as Tupac and Biggie, and all those gangster rappers that influenced Eminem – that Singin’ Brakeman was a bad man, put his 78s in the flames, too.

Boy, those blues men were an awful bunch. Robert Johnson – he stood at the crossroads and sold his soul to Satan, himself. Listen to his 1930s recording, “Me and the Devil Blues.” “I’m goin’ beat my woman until I get satisfied,” sings Johnson. In “32-20 Blues” he informs his listeners that “if she gets unruly and thinks she don’t wan’ do,” he’ll take his 32-20 shotgun and “cut her half in two.”

“I’m beggin’ you baby, cut out that off the wall jive / If you can’t treat me no better, it gotta be your funeral and my trial,” sang Sonny Boy Williams II, during the 1950s. “Your funeral and my trial,” how horrid – Bob Dylan sings the same line on his latest album, too.

Rock ‘n’ roll, now there’s a real cesspool of depraved verse. You got sadists such as the Rolling Stones singing “Under My Thumb.” Then, “Father, yes son, I want to kill you / Mother … I want to … f- -k you,” from “The End” – by Jim Morrison of The Doors. It’s a shame he didn’t keel over sooner. That song is probably what inspired Eminem to write about his own mother in such a disturbingly Freudian way: “Just … and take it like a … ok, ma / ‘Oh, now he’s raping his own mother.'”

Classic rock music is teeming with all types of ostensibly respectable characters – Neil Young (“Down by The River”), Jimi Hendrix (“Hey, Joe”) – who freely sing about shooting their trifling old lady. So much for flower power. All these records must be shattered.

And it’s getting worse…

“Tied up, tied down, up against the wall / Be my rubbermade baby / An’ we can do it all,” is what Guns N’ Roses front man Axl Rose had to say about his lover on their 1987 debut album Appetite for Destruction. The next year, gangster rap was born and all hell really broke loose: “So what about the b–h who got shot? F–k her! Think I give a damn about a b–h? I ain’t a sucker,” sang Eazy-E on N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton.”

We must destroy it all – even banal rhymes such as the former mentioned. But, we must pay especially close attention to eliminating the further distribution of anything by this fiend, Eminem. Because, you see, Eminem is just too skilled at expressing himself. Too good at conveying man’s most primal urges, these perverted themes that have plagued popular music for the last seven decades. He’s just too talented – probably sold his soul to Satan, also – for the masses to ignore, so we must intervene and bring him down.

“Put your hands down, bitch, I ain’t gonna shoot you / I’m gonna pull you to this bullet and put it through you” – another line from his song “Kill You,” showing just how sharp this wraith’s words can be.

Please, help me. We must unite and fight these evil forces before they put foreign thoughts into the minds of all men. We need more than advisory stickers; we need to see these vessels of evil demolished – forbidden to ever pen such filth again – before it’s too late.

• Contact Wade Tatangelo atoracleofflimits@yahoo.com