Michael Jackson calls it a bad rap

Michael Jackson laughed along with fans at “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Eat It” video in 1984 that parodied the scrawny pop star as an obese foodaholic, but Jackson finds nothing funny in a new Eminem video lampooning him and is asking that music video outlets adhere to the song’s title and “Just Lose It.”

The video, showing the Detroit rapper in prosthetic makeup that makes him look like Jackson, sitting on a bed with children dancing around him, is “offensive” to Jackson, according to the singer’s publicist, Raymone Bain. But she said reports that Jackson plans to sue Eminem were erroneous.

“Michael is very thick-skinned -- a lot of people don’t know that,” Bain said Wednesday. “He has been spoofed over and over again, but he feels that Eminem crossed the line this time, and that it’s very demeaning and disrespectful.”

The BET channel stopped playing the video Tuesday, but it remains on the playlists at MTV, MTV2 and MTVU as of Wednesday, according to a spokeswoman for the music video channel. It has not aired on MTV’s sister channel, VH1.

“Just Lose It,” the first single from Eminem’s forthcoming album “Encore,” includes the lines: “Come here little kiddies, on my lap/Guess who’s back with a brand new rap?/And I don’t mean rap as in a new case of child investigation accusation ...”

It continues: “Papa’s got a brand new bag of toys/What else could I possibly do to make noise/I’ve done touched on everything but little boys/That’s not a stab at Michael/That’s just a metaphor, I’m just psycho/I go a little bit crazy sometimes/I get a little bit out of control with my rhymes.”

The record is one of the hottest in the country and is being played on mainstream pop radio stations nationwide. The “Just Lose It” video also has a reference to the 1984 incident in which Jackson’s hair caught fire while he was filming a Pepsi commercial and uses an opening that recalls Jackson’s video for his 1983 hit “Billie Jean.”

“I’ve never had a problem with Eminem,” Jackson told KKBT-FM (100.3) air personality Steve Harvey after calling in to Harvey’s show Tuesday. “I’ve admired Eminem as an artist, and was shocked by this. The video was inappropriate and disrespectful to me, my children, my family and the community at large.”

A statement issued by BET chairman and founder Robert Johnson, and posted on the channel’s website, said: “BET pulled the video because we feel it is inappropriate to use our network to air a video disrespectful of Michael’s character, or that of any other celebrity.”

Bain said Jackson was pleased with BET’s decision and hopes other channels will do the same.

“We are sorry that BET made this decision,” the rapper’s label, Interscope Records, said in a statement issued Tuesday. The label used the occasion to plug his latest release, adding: “Eminem’s new album, ‘Encore,’ will be released on Nov. 16.”

Billboard’s director of charts, Geoff Mayfield, on Wednesday said, “Eminem has tweaked people before. On his records he’s called out Christina Aguilera, ‘N Sync and Moby, so it’s not a huge surprise that he would tweak someone else either with his lyrics or a video.

“It all plays in Eminem’s favor,” Mayfield added, “since his fans already know he’s capable of throwing a slap here and there, against those with whom he feels he has issues. This is already acceptable behavior for his fan base, and might even be something that galvanizes his fans.”

Eminem, whose albums have sold more than 28 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, and garnered him nine Grammy Awards and a best-song Oscar, has frequently been at the center of controversy for his provocative lyrics, some of which have been criticized as homophobic and misogynistic.

Jackson, meanwhile, has been indicted by a grand jury in Santa Barbara County on four counts of committing lewd acts on a child under 14, one count of attempting a lewd act and four counts of providing an intoxicant to a child for the purpose of sexual seduction. He is free on $3 million bail and is awaiting trial.