Eminem "Threatens" the President

One thing you gotta admire about right-wingers is their skill at picking one idea or talking point and getting everyone on their team to drive that one angle home, thus dictating the parameters of debate.

Recently their think tanks decided the newest angle should be something called "Bush Hate". This means that in order to avoid actually engaging Democrats on the issues, they all focus on this notion that the Dems are wild-eyed lunatics, driven purely by an irrational hatred of Bush as a human being.

Needless to say, this is asinine. Of course Democrats and liberals all hate Bush. If one side's guy gets in, the other side hates him, that's how it works. Does the right think anyone has forgotten how fervently they despised both Bill and Hillary?

But right-wingers have become so fond of this angle that now they're even using obscure Eminem lyrics to bolster their case, namely this line from "We As Americans", one of the Straight From the Lab bootlegs currently floating around:

I don't rap for dead presidents/ I'd rather see the president dead..

Golly, how frightening. Not only has the Secret Service been called upon to investigate this horrifying threat, but righty bloggers are trumpeting this as evidence that liberal Bush Hate now threatens the very life of the President.

Makes sense to me. We all know Eminem represents the Hollywood liberal establishment, always hanging at James Carville's house with Al Franken and Aaron Sorkin. Seriously, I'd be surprised if he was even registered to vote, or could name 3 of the Democratic candidates. This line about "the president" probably indicates nothing about Eminem's opinion of this particular Chief Executive, he would have spit it just the same whether Bush, Gore, or Bronson Pinchot was in office.

When I used to teach, one day a couple of boys were trading mother jokes in the hall, and a teacher walking by was aghast. After berating one boy for talking about his friend's mother that way, the boy looked up and explained, in the tone of someone helping a toddler with arithmetic: "I'm not saying anything about his mother. I don't even know his mother. I'm just talking about 'your mother'!"

This Eminem line should not be taken literally as a threat to the President any more than mother jokes should be taken as criticism of the specific woman who is actually your mother. He's not saying anything about this President, he's just kicking a line about "the president".

(right-wing blog link via Oliver Willis)