Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.
Maybe we should all start making a new claim when confronted with this crap. Yes, you have a freedom to practice your religion…as long as your practice doesn't infringe on anyone's right to be human, with all the rights and privileges adhering to that to be shared in common, regardless.
"We didn't mean any disrespect" is probably perfectly true—and perfectly beside the point. It's easier, I suppose, when your religion does the disrespecting for you so you don't have to.
When I saw the original version of that photo, I didn't have any erotic thoughts. But perhaps that is because my sensibilities have been numbed by decades of exposure to American culture.
I think in this case they unwittingly revealed the underlying purpose of such occlusion. There is no way you could see the women in that photograph as "sex objects"—and that's a bigger problem than some beauty queen in a bikini, because heaven forbid women should ever have actual, you know, power.
What recourse does the White House have for this? It seems clearly within the newspaper's first amendment rights to alter these photos. Given that, how does the White House typically enforce its "ban" on alteration of photos? The only fair recourse I can think of is for the White House to stop including this paper in its wire of press and photo releases.
People online edit White House photos all the time, mostly for satirical or gag purposes. I doubt the White House worries too much about people turning Joe Biden into a Lolcat, for example. But no one making Joe Biden Lolcats is running around posting the picture in a news venue, so it seems fair for the White House to have some kind of response to this. Forcing the paper to take its silly, medieval photos down seems unfair, but there ought to be some way to cease treating this institution like a real news outlet.
Erika: If only I had been a subscriber to this bigoted backwards newspaper, I would have had the pleasure of cancelling my subscription. It all does make you wonder what goes through the minds of some people. I suspect that the craziness of most crazy people is not in their logic, but in their basic perceptions. Once you see women as dirty and incompetent, you don't need crazy logic to be crazy.
The photo is in the public domain, so they had a right to publish the photo, but I'm not clear on whether there is a cause of action for altering it in this way. It's not really a defamation case–putting someone in a false light that damages their reputation. Maybe we ought to invent a new tort for doing stupid things that cause one's self to be ridiculed.
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Maybe we should all start making a new claim when confronted with this crap. Yes, you have a freedom to practice your religion…as long as your practice doesn't infringe on anyone's right to be human, with all the rights and privileges adhering to that to be shared in common, regardless.
"We didn't mean any disrespect" is probably perfectly true—and perfectly beside the point. It's easier, I suppose, when your religion does the disrespecting for you so you don't have to.
When I saw the original version of that photo, I didn't have any erotic thoughts. But perhaps that is because my sensibilities have been numbed by decades of exposure to American culture.
I think in this case they unwittingly revealed the underlying purpose of such occlusion. There is no way you could see the women in that photograph as "sex objects"—and that's a bigger problem than some beauty queen in a bikini, because heaven forbid women should ever have actual, you know, power.
What recourse does the White House have for this? It seems clearly within the newspaper's first amendment rights to alter these photos. Given that, how does the White House typically enforce its "ban" on alteration of photos? The only fair recourse I can think of is for the White House to stop including this paper in its wire of press and photo releases.
People online edit White House photos all the time, mostly for satirical or gag purposes. I doubt the White House worries too much about people turning Joe Biden into a Lolcat, for example. But no one making Joe Biden Lolcats is running around posting the picture in a news venue, so it seems fair for the White House to have some kind of response to this. Forcing the paper to take its silly, medieval photos down seems unfair, but there ought to be some way to cease treating this institution like a real news outlet.
Erika: If only I had been a subscriber to this bigoted backwards newspaper, I would have had the pleasure of cancelling my subscription. It all does make you wonder what goes through the minds of some people. I suspect that the craziness of most crazy people is not in their logic, but in their basic perceptions. Once you see women as dirty and incompetent, you don't need crazy logic to be crazy.
The photo is in the public domain, so they had a right to publish the photo, but I'm not clear on whether there is a cause of action for altering it in this way. It's not really a defamation case–putting someone in a false light that damages their reputation. Maybe we ought to invent a new tort for doing stupid things that cause one's self to be ridiculed.