1938 political cartoon attacking Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Ever since NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” went on the air in 1975, it has made fun of the president of the United States. From Gerald Ford‘s absentmindedness to Bill Clinton’s philandering to Barack Obama‘s ultra-calm politeness, presidents have had to contend with their satirical SNL portrayals. Usually, presidents have laughed along with such send-ups, knowing that not only is this the price they pay to lead a free society, but also that, for politicians, a little self-deprecating humor can go a long way.
Now comes Donald Trump, however, who has no self-deprecating humor and, according to many people, no self-awareness. Trump also has the thinnest skin of any president (or just about anyone) in our lifetimes. After last Saturday night’s portrayal of Trump on SNL, instead of laughing along, Trump took to his favorite mode of communication, Twitter, and challenged the legality of SNL:
A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018
We can only say, good luck with that.
Donald Trump, let us introduce you to the U.S. Constitution and its First Amendment. It protects both “freedom of speech” and freedom “of the press.” The courts in particular have staunchly defended speech in the form of satire and parody, as well as political speech, especially regarding political leaders and other public figures. An illustrative U.S. Supreme Court case is Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, with which many people are familiar from the movie “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” starring Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and Edward Norton. In this case, in 1983 Hustler Magazine featured a parody of an advertisement, modeled after an actual Campari Liqueur ad campaign, claiming that Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Fundamentalist minister and Republican political leader, had drunken sex with his mother in an outhouse. Even though the Supreme Court agreed that Hustler’s parody ad caused emotional distress to Falwell, it ruled that Hustler was not liable to Falwell for intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation or invasion of privacy. According to the Court’s opinion:
[T]he freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty — and thus a good unto itself — but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions….
The sort of robust political debate encouraged by the First Amendment is bound to produce speech that is critical of those who hold public office or those public figures who are intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large. Justice Frankfurter put it succinctly in Baumgartner v. United States, when he said that “[o]ne of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures.” Such criticism, inevitably, will not always be reasoned or moderate; public figures as well as public officials will be subject to “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.” [T]he candidate who vaunts his spotless record and sterling integrity cannot convincingly cry “Foul!” when an opponent or an industrious reporter attempts to demonstrate the contrary.
All of this is a formal way of saying, if you run for and become president, you subject yourself to “unpleasantly sharp attacks” by the free press and by citizens in America and around the world. If you can’t take the heat, as they say, get out of the kitchen. Indeed, there is increasing talk of Donald Trump being impeached and/or otherwise resigning before his term is up. One way it now seems that might happen is for Trump literally to get laughed out of office.
Photo by Cliff, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/7WR1FI
