WASHINGTON — The Onion has some serious things to say in defense of parody.<\/p>\n
The satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd has filed a Supreme Court brief in support of a man who was arrested and prosecuted for making fun of police on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the globe\u2019s premier parodists, The Onion\u2019s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists,\u201d lawyers for the Onion wrote in a brief filed Monday. \u201cThis brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court filing doesn\u2019t entirely keep a straight face, calling the federal judiciary \u201ctotal Latin dorks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Onion said it employs 350,000 people, is read by 4.3 trillion people and \u201chas grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court case involves Anthony Novak, who was arrested after he spoofed the Parma, Ohio, police force in Facebook posts.<\/p>\n
The posts were published over 12 hours and included an announcement of new police hiring \u201cstrongly encouraging minorities to not apply.\u201d Another post promoted a fake event in which child sex offenders could be \u201cremoved from the sex offender registry and accepted as an honorary police officer.\u201d<\/p>\n
After being acquitted of criminal charges, the man sued the police for violating his constitutional rights. But a federal appeals court ruled the officers have \u201cqualified immunity\u201d and threw out the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
One issue is whether people might reasonably have believed that what they saw on Novak\u2019s site was real.<\/p>\n
But The Onion said Novak had no obligation to post a disclaimer. \u201cPut simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original,\u201d the Onion said, noting its own tendency to mimic \u201cthe dry tone of an Associated Press news story.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than once, people have republished the Onion\u2019s claims as true, including when it reported in 2012 that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was the sexiest man alive.<\/p>\n
The brief concludes with a familiar call for the court to hear the case and a twist.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe petition for certiorari should be granted, the rights of the people vindicated, and various historical wrongs remedied. The Onion would welcome any one of the three, particularly the first,\u201d lawyers for the Onion wrote.<\/p>\n