Eminem's Kim: Selective Censorship

One of the songs that made the rap artist Eminem well known is from his 2000 album The Marshall Mathers LP. It's called Kim. The original song can't be found anymore, at least in decent quality. Two words are taken out of it in the new song, the words four and boy. In this part of the song, Eminem is talking about a dead kid. The reason this was censored was the Columbine tragedy was barely a year old and people (rightfully so) were still pretty sensitive about dead children. So that makes sense, but what is the rest of the song about you ask? Well, it's about fantasizing about brutally murdering his wife Kim for cheating on him. It's more powerful to listen to the song, but some of the most notable moments include crazy verbal abuse, dragging Kim out of car by a car, and violently choking her to end her life. So what is the difference between the two? Both are extremely graphic in nature. Yet no words are censored the rest of the song. Personally, I think it should be either or. Either you can handle both things, or you can handle neither. Less so much in cinema, but it television, there is pretty an unspoken rule about not killing children. Like I said, I think both sides can be right but there really shouldn't be a middle ground. In the case of Kim, there were some people who tried to forbid the song from being on his album anymore. the only thing they ended up censoring was the words four and boy. Explicit content labels exist for a reason. Obviously it's up to a parent to decide what their child can listen to until they are mature enough to make their own decisions. If they decide their child isn't ready, that's fine. If a grown adult decides to buy the album and listen to the song, he should be able to make his own decisions about what he hears.