The clarion call for justice is still being heard across America thanks to the efforts of its finest purveyor of fake news.
The Onion, a long-running satirical publication, has filed a very real legal document with the US Supreme Court, urging it to take a case centered on the right to parody. The filing does what the Onion does best to make a serious legal point, in order to make a big helping of total nonsense.
The filing cites global Onion readership as the single most powerful and influential organization in human history, it is the source of 350,000 jobs at its offices and manual labor camps, it holds the nation s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily with such power. Why does the Onion feel the need to weigh in on a mundane court case? The filing asserts that it is intended to protect its ability to create fiction that may eventually merge into reality. The writers of the Onion have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists. This brief was submitted in the hope of at least mildigating their future punishment. The filing points out that the Ohio Police Officers are arrested, a Prosecute man who made fun of them on Facebook It sounds like an Onion headline, but it is not.
In 2016 Anthony Novak was arrested for launching a Facebook page that parodied the local police page. He was charged with disrupting a public service, but was acquitted. He sued the department a year later, arguing that it was retaliating against him for using his right to free speech.
In May a US appeals court backed the police in the case, a finding Novak s lawyer said the case sets dangerous precedent undermining free speech. Novak appealed to the supreme court last week, leading to the filing of an amicus brief, a filing by an outside party trying to influence the court.
In one of its less amusing sections, the brief argues that the appeals court ruling imperils an ancient form of discourse. The court s decision suggests that parodists are only in the clear if they pop the balloon in advance and warn their audience that their parody is not true. Some forms of comedy don't work unless the comedian is able to tell the joke with a straight face. In the meantime, the Onion can't stand in the face of a ruling that threatens to disembowel a form of rhetoric that has existed for millennia, that is particularly potent in the realm of political debate, and forms the basis of The Onion's writers paychecks.