8 Mile is out today. I am so not an Eminem fan: other than a (very few) catchy little numbers ("Trailer park girls - please stand up - wikky wikky Slim Shady"), nothing about this pud interests me at all (he's making fun of white trash??).

White rapper? So what, the Beasties are much better, cooler, and partake of more appealing aspects of black culture than does poor little Marshall, for whom the world is a ghetto.

I also don't get this media ass-kissing he has been receiving of late: Jan Herman has done a great job of identifying the puckerers:

Both the current Entertainment Weekly and Sunday's New York Times magazine put him on their covers. And that's just the leading edge of the flackery.

For ET he's posing like a macho boxer, showing off his tattoos. For the Times he's posing like a sad choirboy, looking so angelic. Everyone loves Eminem. He's such a sweetheart.

But which is the real Eminem? Everyone wants to know. You'll never find out from the interviews in either magazine, both of which read like studio advertisements for his new flick "8 Mile."

Frank Rich, the Times' former "butcher of Broadway" once feared for his take-no-prisoners theater criticism, wrote a mash note: "We were meeting on the afternoon of the MTV Video Music Awards, in a Midtown hotel under semi-siege by those underemployed fans who always manage to find out where their icons are holed up. I was there as a sort-of fan myself. I've been fascinated by him ever since I first heard his songs at the inception of his notoriety."

Rich, who I'd say is one overemployed fan, writes up the usual Eminem blueprint: Broken home, Detroit trailer trash, nasty lyrics, hates homosexuals, insults his mother, ugly divorce, gun charges, but boy, he loves his daughter, loves the 'hood, spreads his mightiness to the suburbs, and now he's got it together, he's even OK with gays, but he's risking it all because maybe Hollywood's a trap and what if he doesn't cross over to screen stardom, maybe the 'hood will drop him and the recording industry will really tank, so stay tuned, etc.

Nobody expects a probing profile or a tough line of questioning from Entertainment Weekly. True to form, here's how the magazine's Daniel Fierman begins: "Hey, man. I know your time is valuable. So I hope you don't mind if I jump right in." Eminem doesn't mind at all. "Wow," he says to his publicist. "Why can't you be more appreciative like that?"