By Tom Quiner
I ran across this poster on Facebook today with this question: ”Is this poster libelous?”
In other words, is it false, and does it bring President Obama into disrepute?
You may think that former President Bush was subjected to much worse. But he had a much healthier respect for the First Amendment than Barack Obama.
You tell me: is this poster libelous?
If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…. then most likely it’s a duck!
Tough one, but two of the three could have a case..If they were, well, you know.
No! Sure I understand that there is a fine line between being true and correct, and on the other hand being malicious and trying to put someone’s character at risk or harm. This particular piece of work in your example, does not injure, harm, or is it malicious at all. The way I understand the First Amendment, in the Freedom of the Speech/Press clause is very similar to Justice’s Black dissenting opinion to the Court in Bridges v. California, 1940 that was circulated post-mortem and had several cases overturned in the years thereafter. The best I can do with “Bridges” from Black’s perspective is that the Founders did not believe the gov’t had any right to suppress the conscience, expression, creativeness, or otherwise of the press. However, this is certainly not to say or imply anyway that libel doesn’t exist; certainly it does; however, if one is using iron to sharpen iron or to make creative discourse better then the 1st Amendment is in fact doing what the Framers intended what it would.
Not libelous. Truth is always a defense.