Afroman Wins Defamation Case, Because Making Fun Of Stupid Cops Is 100 Percent American

Free speech costs a buck oh five.

Screenshot from one of Afroman’s videos mocking Adams County, Ohio, deputies who raided his home in 2022. Afroman on YouTube.

In a wonderfully weird free speech case, a jury in Ohio Wednesday found that rapper Afroman did not defame sheriff’s deputies by mocking them in a series of music videos he released after the cops raided his home in 2022. In that raid, captured on Afroman’s home security cameras, gun-wielding deputies broke down a door, searched through the house, and terrified Afroman’s wife and children, who were in the house at the time, although he was away.

The cops had a warrant, apparently based on a flimsy tip, to search for evidence that Afroman (real name Joseph Foreman) was involved in drug trafficking and, somehow, “kidnapping,” although no hostages or drugs were found in the raid. Afroman wasn’t arrested or even charged, but he also wasn’t offered any compensation for the damage to his property. As he said on a recent podcast, when he asked a deputy if they would help fix his door or clean up the mess they left behind, the cop simply “waddled his head” and said “We’re not required to do that.”

Afroman — whom you definitely remember as the creator of “Because I Got High,” that 2000 anthem to bad life decisions — says in the podcast interview that if the system wasn’t going to hold the cops responsible for their actions, it became his obligation to do it himself, legally, using his chosen artform: hilariously rude music videos mocking the cops and demanding justice, or at least generating enough revenue to repair his property.

In a sad Milkshake Duck moment while the Internet was greatly enjoying clips of his testimony yesterday, people noted that Afroman has happily posed with Donald Trump and tried to hustle up some Hunter Biden bucks with “Hunter Got High.” And that’s okay. Fucking with cops and standing firm on your First Amendment rights are worth reaching across weird aisles.

Here’s the first of several viral videos about the raid, “Lemon Pound Cake,” in which one cop’s brief glance down at a cake on Afroman’s kitchen counter provides the hook for a raucous ballad about the raid, borrowing the tune of “Under the Boardwalk.”

The Adams County Sheriff kicked down my door
Then I heard the glass break 
They found no kidnapping victims
Just some lemon pound cake.

It’s catchy and you can dance to it, and because it features video from the raid, seven Adams County deputies seen in the security camera footage sued in 2023, claiming Afroman had defamed them, used their faces without permission, and caused them to suffer “humiliation, ridicule, mental distress, embarrassment and loss of reputation.”

Other songs about the raid included “Will You Help Me Repair My Door” and “Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera,” as well as a series of videos naming and mocking the individual cops involved in the raid, usually obscenely, like “Randy Walters Is A Son Of A Bitch,” in which Afroman follows the title line with “that’s why I fucked his wife and got filthy rich.” (Walters appears to be the cop who told Afroman the sheriff’s office wasn’t required to do anything after trashing his house; the home surveillance video also caught Walters giving the finger to one of the house’s cameras during the raid.)

Afroman posted most of the personal diss tracks as the defamation trial got underway, which led to even more content, like this goofy testimony in which Afroman’s attorney asks Walters if he believes and takes literally everything he sees on the internet.

@meghanncuniff

Meghann M. Cuniff on Instagram: "A lawyer defending rapper Afro…

At the trial, Walters groused that all this free speech and satire was out of control, and should be shut down because it’s so unfair. “Now my family has to be harmed because of straight-up 100 percent lies,” Walters complained. “Where in the world is it okay to make something up for fun that’s damaging to others when you know for sure it’s an absolute lie? That’s a problem.”

Again, satire is protected by the First Amendment, and nobody in their right mind would believe that, as the Washington Post daintily described the video (gift link), “the rapper had an affair with Walters’s wife of 28 years.”

It’s remarkably easy and and fun to go down a rabbit hole of videos about the raid and the trial, but the key issue here remains the First Amendment’s protection of speech that stands as commentary and satire, as Afroman said during the trial. Pressed by plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Klingler to walk back mean and untrue things he said about some of the deputies in his videos, Afroman instead said, as he has all along, that he’s exercising his right to free speech to comment on his experiences as he sees fit:

“After they run around my house with guns and kick down my door, I got the right to kick a can in my backyard, use my freedom of speech, turn my bad times into a good time. Yes, I do, and I think I'm a sport for doing so, because I don't go to their house, kick down their doors, flip them off on their surveillance cameras, then try to play the victim and sue them.”

Afroman’s attorney, David Osborne Jr., emphasized that under Supreme Court precedents protecting commentary, mockery that a reasonable person can recognize is satirical is still protected speech, even if it’s mean, and even when it’s a ridiculous falsehood that the hypothetical reasonable person would recognize is not a statement of fact. (Thank you for that at least, Larry Flynt.)

That’s especially important in this case, because yeah, at least one of the videos mocking the cops was a nasty, misogynist personal attack on Deputy Lisa Phillips. [Content warning: the linked video is both protected by the First Amendment and sexist as fuck]. During the real 2022 raid, Phillips can be seen grinning at a surveillance camera just before snipping the cords on Afroman’s home security system, but the satirical video, titled “Licc’em Low Lisa,” is disproportionately cruel. Afroman sings that Phillips’s voice is “a few octaves lower” (hurr hurr, like a dude!) and the video uses a look-alike actor to depict “Phillips” mimicking oral sex on another woman — but obviously a foot away from actually touching the other actor. (At trial, Klingler, the plaintiffs’ attorney, noted that those scenes were shot in Afroman’s attorney’s office, where Philips had earlier recorded her deposition in the case. Ick.)

Phillips cried during her testimony when the entire 13-minute video was played at trial, although there too, Afroman pointed out that his children cried when Phillips was in his house in 2022 and confronting them with an AR-15 loaded with live ammo. “But I’m not a person. She is. So I’m sorry for being a victim. Let’s talk about the predators.”

Also, a quick sidebar: In coverage of the trial this week, the geniuses at the New York Post mistakenly captioned two screenshots from Afroman’s satirical video as if they were footage of the raid, identifying the stand-in as if she were actually Phillips. She should sue them, maybe.

The New York Post, presenting screenshots from a fake video as if they were real. Note the orange tips on the gun barrels, indicating they’re Airsoft replicas.

Osborne pointed out at trial that as public officials, the cops are fair game for public criticism, even if it’s cruel and hurts their feelings, because that’s the Constitution.

“It is a social commentary on the fact that they didn't do things correctly,” Osborne said. “They don't like it. That's not their choice, to like it or not. They're public officials. They're going to he held to a higher standard. Their work's going to be criticized. I mean, that's just what happens when you're a public official.”

In his closing argument, Klingler played up the music videos’ terrible, intentional lies “about these seven brave deputy sheriffs who’ve lived in this county for years, risk their lives for this county for years, done their job,” suggesting that as long as you’re a cop, you should never be mocked, even if you’re dangerously, irresponsibly bad at your job.

Osborne carefully laid out the legal history of satire and satirical music under the First Amendment, noting that even if jurors didn’t like what Afroman sang, he has a right to sing his opinion, and that’s precious in America. He also pointed to his client, wearing that goofy American-flag suit (a very conscious echo, we’d say, of Flynt’s coming to court clad in only a diaper made from the Stars and Stripes).

“Does this,” Osborne asked, “look like a man who thinks that everybody’s going to assume that everything he’s saying is fact?”

The jury sided with Afroman, finding he hadn’t defamed anyone, and after its verdict, Afroman told reporters,

“I didn’t win. America won. America still has freedom of speech. It’s still for the people by the people.

“This whole thing is their fault. They broke into my house, put themselves on my video cameras, and into my music career. With my freedom of speech, I had the right to talk about the events going on in my life, with my family, with my friends, and with my fans.”

And that, Charlie Brown, is the real meaning of free speech.

OPEN THREAD.

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Larry Flynt Dead At 78, Will Be Wrapped In Kleenex, Tossed In Toilet

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[CNN / WaPo (gift link) / WCPO / NYP]

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