Satire, the case and background

The one criticism of the "State of Our Satirical Union" symposium I heard from several people was that it was too short, that another half day would have helped spread out the vast amount of information, and, while I don't intend to quote every word here, I think I'll take the time we didn't have and break it down into two more days.

The above Pat Oliphant cartoon depicts a central issue, which was that, if there were a case upon which to stage a landmark fight over free expression, Falwell v Hustler was hardly the one anyone would have hand-picked. But there it was, and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists felt it couldn't go undefended or the precedent would kill the profession.

The old bromide about politics making strange bedfellows being, in this case, as appalling an image as the parody being defended.

This is one of a series of nudge-nudge-wink-wink ads that Campari had been running in a variety of magazines, though probably not Hustler -- a magazine almost entirely noted for being more explicit than other "men's magazines" in gynecological detail -- which created this parody for its November 1983 issue: The Rev. Jerry Falwell, head of a powerful rightwing group called "The Moral Majority," had the option of ignoring the whole thing, but chose to sue for Invasion of Privacy, Libel and Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.

The jury rejected all but the libel claim, awarding damages, and a state supreme court upheld the verdict, which Hustler brought to the Supreme Court, and which brings us to the Saturday's first panel. 

Roslyn Mazer was the attorney who provided an amicus brief in the case on behalf of the AAEC, of which Ben Sargent was then president, with Mike Peters having been a recent Pulitzer winner for his editorial work.

The AAEC had not previously been active in this sort of way, but felt the case could not go unchallenged, according to Sargent, who was then the cartoonist for the Austin American-Statesman and, he said, "proudly a life-long enemy of the people."

Meanwhile, a senior partner in Mazer's office was the father of editorial cartoonist Jim Morin, and so she was cut loose to represent the AAEC pro bono.

There was, she says, a temptation to let the case go and hope it would be a one-off decision and would never come up again, but, if Falwell prevailed, the resulting scenario could be ruinous, with cartoonists continually called upon to defend their work at a cost that would destroy them even if they prevailed.

In her amicus brief, she focused her attention on persuading Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, a pair of conservatives known to have senses of humor and an appetite for American history, and her exhibits included a number of examples of cartoons lampooning various public figures.

Though not this Paul Conrad piece, which had gone after Rehnquist when, in his confirmation hearings as Chief Justice, it emerged that he owned a home with a restrictive deed prohibiting sale to Jews and POC (a fairly common bit of boilerplate most homeowners never noticed).

Mazer says that, a few years later, she found herself sitting next to Rehnquist at a dinner and confessed the missing cartoon, which he remembered from when it ran in papers.

He laughed, and told her she should have included it, which is something of a key to how things went.

It turned out that Rehnquist not only had both a sense of humor and of history, but had been a cartoonist in high school.

 

And, in oral arguments, it emerged that Scalia, too, appeared to be on the side of the satirists, as he eviscerated Falwell's counsel, raising a point that Pat Oliphant, acting as unofficial courtroom artist, captured in this sketch lampooning the attorney.

 

The result was not simply a victory for Hustler, free speech and satire, but an unanimous decision, creating a precedent that it would be hard for anyone to challenge today.

The critical point in Rehnquist's decision is at bottom in that slide, that allowing juries to decide what is and what isn't outrageous would be disastrously subjective for free speech.

Though, as Peters somewhat inadvertently showed in his presentation, it's not as if the decision forever banished religious hypocrisy but only made it legal to point it out. He couldn't find a cartoon he had originally drawn about the Moral Majority in its heyday, so recreated it, upon which his wife pointed out that things hadn't changed much and encouraged him to update it and post it again.

The only change -- besides color, which was rare three decades ago -- was changing "Moral Majority" to the more generic "Christian right."

And Sargent noted the decline of editorial cartoons generally, not in failing to make solid points but in standing out amid the clutter of social media.

We are no longer sitting around a media campfire sharing stories, he said, and having the right to be heard is no guarantee that you will be heard, or that, even if you are, you'll have any real impact.

 

In a later panel, a variety of political cartoons were presented to show the long tradition in which they follow, notably this piece Signe Wilkinson offered, that was commissioned by Martin Luther and shows the disregard of Protestants for the authority of the Pope and, I would add, raises the interesting question of whether the Pythons were aware of it when they penned the immortal line, "I fart in your general direction."

Wilkinson also offered this much more recent Pat Oliphant cartoon, a strong attack on the pederasty scandal in the Catholic church, though she added a caveat that arcs back to Ben Sargent's earlier qualification: Of roughly 200 newspapers that subscribed to Oliphant's work, only "four or five" chose to run this particular piece.

"The Church complains of bias," she said, "but the evidence is that most newspapers protect the Church."

Nor are cartoons the only source of cutting satire, as Cullum Rogers noted in his presentation, offering, for example, a full-page parody of a newspaper page of which the above was only a tiny fragment of the whole, mocking a familiar boot polish ad but substituting a prominent politician as a rat rather than the original cat fascinated by his reflection.

 

And Bastiaan Vanacker, a professor at Loyola Chicago, noted that Twitter allows fake accounts, as long as they are clearly marked, though policing of this rule seems a bit theoretical.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ignored an outrageous fake account in his name and likely made a wise choice, Vanacker said, in contrast with Peoria's Jim Ardis, who, in fighting back, only drew more eyes to the page, which became an issue in his ultimately unsuccessful re-election campaign.

We'll discuss this sort of non-professional spoofery tomorrow. 

Go grab some lunch and we'll see you back here later.
Meanwhile, here are the oral arguments from the
case that you can listen to, as well as the
announcement of the decision. 

Comments

[Brian Fies]

So glad you were able to go this. Thanks for the reporting, which is the only news I've heard from the event.

[Mark Jackson]

Great stuff, Mike.

[Bob]

I'm really enjoying the series, Mike. One point I'd make that I see rarely addressed is the absolutely one-issue only matters religious vote. Many Catholics' vote depends only on the stance of the politician with respect to abortion, which means it's unlikely they ever will vote for a Democrat.

Looking forward to tomorrow's column.