1ST AMENDMENT STILL LIVES?
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James Joyner | Wednesday, December 31, 2003 |
Recently, upon learning that the Supreme Court upheld the massive restrictions on political speech in McCain-Feingold, I pronounced the 1st Amendent dead. Apparently, I was too hasty. As Steven Taylor reports,
A federal appeals court has upheld a Utah artist’s right to make nude photos of Barbie dolls being menaced by kitchen appliances.Noting the image of Barbie dolls is “ripe for social comment,” a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday rejected toymaker Mattel Inc.’s appeal of a lower court ruling in favor of lampooning the popular doll.
[...]The artist had argued that the photo series, which also included a photo of Barbie dolls wrapped in tortillas and covered in salsa in a casserole dish in a lit oven, was meant to critique the “objectification of women” and “beauty myth” associated with the popular doll.
I’m sure this type of thing is precisely what James Madison had in mind.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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But the bigger problem still is that public interest groups, in the few weeks leading up to a presidential election, cannot have ads featuring nude Barbies under attack from a Cuisinart claiming, "Under the Bush Administration, Women's Rights Have Been Chopped, Diced and Blended."
However, Paul Begala -- in his role on Crossfire -- can, on Monday November 1, still analyze how the rights nude Barbies have melted away under George Bush by putting a representative Barbie in the microwave for the whole CNN audience to see!
And I'm sure it will still be legal for some artist to buy TV time in the week before an election featuring a "daring and bold" performance art piece wherein a Bush bobblehead doll sodomizes a Barbie (now legal under Lawrence).
Happy New Year!
So, if I dress up a Ken doll in a suit and show it being menaced by the toaster oven, but label the doll "Howard Dean" and the toaster oven "reality," can I get it on TV during the last 60 days before an election?
Nuts -- John's comment wasn't there when I started typing mine.
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