Eminem has been a hot topic in a recent court case as the Supreme Court attempts to decide as to whether or not threats on the Internet should be considered as real threats or not.
Pennsylvania man Anthony Elonis was defending his online threats by saying he intended to have them read as if they were a rap verse.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts then brought up the following lyrics from Eminem’s “97 Bonnie & Clyde.”
“You know: ‘Dada make a nice bed for mommy at the bottom of the lake, tie a rope around a rock’ — this is during the context of a domestic dispute between a husband and wife. ‘There goes mama splashing in the water, no more fighting with dad,’ you know, all that stuff. Now, under your test, could that be prosecuted?”
Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeber then responded “No, because if you look at the context of these statements,” replied Dreeben before being cut off by Roberts.
“Because Eminem said it instead of somebody else?” asked Roberts.
“Because Eminem said it at a concert where people are going to be entertained,” answered Dreeben. “This is a critical part of the context. It wasn’t as if he stated it to her in private or on a Facebook page after having received a protection from abuse order. It wasn’t as if he appropriated a style of rap that wasn’t anything that he had been doing previously in the marriage and all of a sudden tried to express violent statements that way. In the context, I think any reasonable person would conclude at a minimum that there is ambiguity about these statements being a serious intention of an expression to do harm.”
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