Assassination Jokes Are Not Funny

[monk222]

In LJ’s political communities, there is some buzz about a conservative blogger, Solly Forell, who apparently was unaware that, for all of America’s near-absolutism on Free Speech, we do have some laws about threatening the life of the president of the United States, and who posted some blatant tweets on his Twitter calling for Obama’s assassination. And there is much schadenfreude about Solly’s future visit by the Secret Service.

In the course of that discussion, I came across a story about an LJer who got in similar hot water in 2004 over an LJ post joking about President George W. Bush:

A couple of weeks ago, following the last presidential debate, I said some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style. We laughed, we ranted, we all said some things. I thought it was a fairly harmless (and rather obvious) attempt at humor in the face of annoyance, and while a couple of people were offended, as is typical behavior from me, I saw something shiny and forgot about it, thinking that the whole thing was over and done and nothing else would come of what I said.

I was wrong.

At 9:45 last night, the Secret Service showed up on my mother's front door to talk to me about what I said about the President, as what I said could apparently be misconstrued as a threat to his life. After about ten minutes of talking to me and my family, they quickly came to the conclusion that I was not a threat to national security (mostly because we are the least threatening people in the entire world) and told me that they would not recommend that any further action be taken with my case. However, I do now have a file with the FBI that includes my photograph, my e-mail address, and the location of my LJ. This will follow me around for the rest of my life, regardless of the fact that the Secret Service knows that I am not a threat.

Since the law is conveniently stated in one of the posts, I may as well copy and paste it here:

Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

I wonder if this law also applies to rape jokes about these top political leaders, or is there an understood tradition about ‘buggering’ jokes? In any case, being a worrisome sort, I think it would be best to refrain from any humor or commentary that connects any violence to any of our national leaders, and maybe that should include state political leaders, too, in the interest of being perfectly safe. As far as concerns about free speech go, this law does carve only a very small exception. I’m much more concerned about the proscriptions on our porn.