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from the laugh-and-(some-of)-the-world-laughs-with-you dept.
'The Onion' filed a real brief with the Supreme Court supporting man jailed for making fun of cops:
When was the last time you've read an amicus brief? If you're not involved in the legal profession, chances are you may have never actually spent precious time reading one. This amicus brief (PDF) could change that. It was submitted by The Onion, which describes itself in the brief as "the world's leading news publication" with "4.3 trillion" readers that maintains "a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires." [...]
The Onion, of course, is the popular parody website that once named Kim Jong-un as the sexiest man alive. Its team has filed a very real amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Anthony Novak, who was arrested and jailed for four days after briefly running a Facebook page parodying the police department of Parma, Ohio back in 2016.
[...] Despite writing the brief in the same voice its publication uses, and despite filling it with outlandish claims and hilarious quips, The Onion made a very real argument defending the use of parody and explaining how it works:
"Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original. The Sixth Circuit's decision in this case would condition the First Amendment's protection for parody upon a requirement that parodists explicitly say, up-front, that their work is nothing more than an elaborate fiction. But that would strip parody of the very thing that makes it function.
I highly recommend reading the brief yourself [PDF]. [hubie]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by wisnoskij on Sunday October 09 2022, @02:29PM (8 children)
This seems completely reasonable. Comedians tell the truth all the time, and often use their routines to express and propagate ideas. One of my earliest memories of a stand up comic is of a Waco routine. The entire point of the routine, besides making the comic money, was clearly to spread hatred and fear of the ATF. Clearly when you are literally trying to get people to believe a certain way, specifically to hate specific people, it is important to tell the truth. Imagine a world where that comic had made up the some of the atrocities committed (for comedic affect), and imagine a world where the people killed in retribution for Waco came about from one of this comics audience members?
It is completely unclear when comics are speaking the truth and when they are making up lies. Their are literally news/political commentators that also says jokes on the same show. And some of them have clearly abused these free speech laws to sneak in lies or opinion disguised as reading the news and when caught all they do is say, it was a joke. When 95% of your audience members think you are laughing at reality instead of the joke you made up, it is not parody, it is deception. Clearly we do not want TV shows/movies/speeches to only have the requirement to tell one joke at some point to be able to literally bypass all free speech limits in the entire show.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:04PM (6 children)
I see, so it's not the responsibility of the free individual to use critical thinking. It's someone else's.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:09PM
Isn't it ironic?
We need a Dept of Irony to make these kind of rulings. Jokes must be submitted for approval and all harmful content removed.
(Score: 0, Troll) by wisnoskij on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:21PM (4 children)
Critical thinking needs correct information to function. Their is no critical thinking involved when your news source sneaks misinformation between truths in such a way that you believe it is true.
I have seen many of these political/current event comedy shows. No distinction is made between fact and fiction. One second they will be laughing at the news, the second they will be laughing at a made up joke. Their is no implied rule that if the laugh track comes on we know that the commentator just made up the last thing he said. Ethical journalism lists opinion and advocacy pieces separate from news reporting, which is how they prevent themselves from being sued constantly for defamation. Just using a laugh track occasionally should not be a way around the regulations everyone else needs to abide by.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:52PM (1 child)
Wait, you're seriously calling the comedians as the problem here? Any other sources of lies you want to shut down while you're at it...? No? Here's a start [archive.ph] for you.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday October 09 2022, @06:17PM
Must not mod parent +1 Funny...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:07PM (1 child)
I don't think you have a firm grasp of parody. Truth, untruth, innuendo, double meanings, all of that fits into parody.
Newscasters, anchor critters, news commentators don't get the leeway that a comedian gets, or they shouldn't anyway. If your favorite news anchor reports a story that cannot be verified, he should be taken to task. The comedian can make up anything, if it helps to get the point across. The comedian's job is to make his point, and at the same time, make people laugh, or chuckle, or at least groan. That news person, whatever his position, is to report what has happened in the real world. If/when he has a point to make, he should rely on facts, or at least interpretations of facts. It's alright to put a spin on a story, but the news guy has no room to make up his own facts.
Unfortunately, we do see news people making up their own facts, almost routinely. Leave the comedian alone, and crucify the news industry for their transgressions.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2022, @04:42AM
> Unfortunately, we do see news people making up their own facts
Bingo. And that pompous, lying, superior attitude (backed up by institutional power) is precisely what parody is the antidote for. Get too pompous and suddenly the opportunity for parody becomes too strong to resist. The modern Republican era has found a novel path, where they are so ridiculous and fake that parody doesn't work so well. That's why the comedy shows are where the serious news is done now - the truth-telling, speaking to power - while the bobble heads on TV News are doing parody (of news).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2022, @02:48AM
Yeah, I agree, Faux News is a big joke.