Dear Urban Legends:

We read on the Internet on Sunday, December 17 that Slim Shady, a.k.a. Eminem, died in a car crash at 2:30 in the morning. According to this article he was on his way to a late-night party and was drunk and high on drugs. We can’t seem to locate the site. Can you find out if this is true or not?

Dear Reader:

There’s a good reason you can’t find the Web page — it has already been deleted. Another reader sent me the URL shortly before I received your message, but when I tried to access the page, which I’m told was a decent spoof of CNN’s online news site, it was gone.

The article was also posted on a bogus MTV Web page, deleted as well. Emails containing the URLs and the headline “Rapper Eminem Dies in Car Accident” began circulating among AOL users on Saturday; by Sunday the pages were nowhere to be found.

Here, from a newsgroup posting, is the full text attributed to, but not actually published on, CNN:

December 15, 2000
Web posted at 6:12 a.m. EST (0012 GMT)

Rapper “Eminem” Dies in Car Accident.

Multi-platinum artist Marshall Mathers, known by the stage name “Eminem”, was killed at 2:30AM EST while driving a rental car on his way to a late-night party.

Mathers, who authorities believe was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, was behind the wheel of a Saturn coupe that witnesses say swerved to avoid a slow moving vehicle, then lost control and slammed into a grove of trees.

The car was crumpled by the impact, making extraction of Mather’s body very difficult. He was declared dead on the scene by paramedics who arriced a short time later.

Authorities would not comment on details surrounding the accident other than to confirm the identity of the victim.

Mathers was 26.

Clearly a hoax. No legitimate news sources have reported the death of Marshall Mathers. The following denial was posted on Eminem’s official Web site:

“Despite sick-minded ne’er do-well attempts to create a state of panic in this grand country by virtue of a well-crafted CNN.com fake news story prank, our beloved Slim Shady is alive and well,” the statement reads. “Marshall is alive and at home with his family for the holidays in Detroit. And he wishes all of you shady holidays and a dirty new year.”

–David Emery, The New York Times Company

On Wednesday, September 23, 2009, I was informed of some very troubling news. I was informed by a certain friend that Rap and Hip Hip artist Eminem was dead. I will note that said informant was “absolutely positive” that this tragedy had occurred, so you can imagine my state of vexation. I cried 7 hours strait before i had a revelation. You see, I realized that Eminem cannot die. This is not only in the sense that he will live forever through his awesome music and sick nasty beats as celebrated R&B singer Tupac will, but also in that Eminem is immortal. Yes, Immortal. I have concluded that he is not human, for the creations of such mind blowing rhymes and mastery of the English language would, well, blow any human’s mind. I have decided to classify Eminem as species MACKDADDY HOMOERECTUS. Now I know what all of you are thinking, you’re thinking oh Blake that doesn’t conform with popular binomial nomenclature accepted in zoological circles, but i ask you, does such a superhuman being deserve such normality as usually given to subhuman creatures? No it does not. It deserves better, and I think that the more we honor the immortality of Eminem, the more mercy he will show us when his sick disgusting raps aid the Lord himself in defeating the minions of one so called Lucifer.

–Blake Thomas

Note: That Eminem is dead is purely a rumor and, at the time that this article was edited, all available sources of concrete evidence pointed to the contrary.  This article has been published as an example of the high value our culture places on entertainers.

–Kevin Jones

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

If there was only one injustice in the world that you could eliminate, what would it be and why?

–Nathan Peereboom

“Injustice can be eliminated, but human conflicts and natural limitations cannot be removed. The conflicts of social life and the limitations of nature cannot be controlled or transcended. They can, however, be endured and survived. It is possible for there to be a dance with life, a creative response to its intrinsic limits and challenges … [A Feminist Ethic of Risk]”

–Dr. Sharon Welch, Associate Professor of Theology and Applied Theology, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Author of Communities of Resistance and Solidarity.

RE:

If I could only eliminate one injustice it would be the flawed egocentric structure of the mind. The Greek philosopher Protagoras, (praised by Plato as a ‘teacher of virtue’) famously exclaimed that “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not”. That is, man is the standard of all things, even of man himself. One measures another man in relation to another. Because of this, life must exploit itself in order to continue. The tall man is so in relation to the short man. The rich man is so in relation to the poor man. This causes the best consolation of your fellow man to be the reality of those in a plight far worse. ‘Oh, you don’t have X? Well at least you aren’t a starving African living in the Republic of Liberia.’

This applies anywhere from Wall Street to the jungle. A panther must kill just as a man must exploit his own kind. The former case is propelled by a means for survival, and the latter, by unfettered greed and insatiable ambition as a means of alleviating the boredom of life. I would not eliminate life itself, as such a wish is an endeavor of folly, but I would eliminate the design of it, being an injustice unto itself.

–Blake Thomas