Murrieta, California is a town recently known for angry crowds screaming at Immigration & Customs Enforcement buses full of kids. Apparently Murrieta thinks that sort of coverage is not a selling point for the town, because they hired Xavier Hermosillo, a "Crisis Manager." This is a typical and prudent move. Across America, if you ask public officials "how can we recapture the media narrative, calm hostility and anger, and promote sensible dialogue," they will inevitably reply "hire an internet talk show host."

Hermosillo set to work. What could he do to calm the troubled waters, improve the town's reputation, and capture the sympathy of the media?

Of course! He could make moronic defamation threats against Lalo Alcaraz, a political cartoonist who writes the strip La Cucaracha! I can see no way that could go badly.

Hermosillo was apparently agitated over a La Cucaracha cartoon that suggested the bus-screamers were racist. A political cartoonist commenting on politics and public behavior? THIS WILL NOT STAND!

For the picture-impaired: Mr. Hermosillo said "Lalo, There IS a fine line between your Constitutional right to draw cartoons and expressed [sic] your opinions, and falsely, deliberately, and maliciously labeling and attacking an entire community as racist or as 'Hate City.' You are working overtime to damage Murrieta and such a false premise is actionable. There's a fine line between humor and stupidity. You may have crossed that line at your own peril."

This is, of course, utter bollocks. An "entire community" can't file a defamation suit. Even if they could, political cartoons are at the very core of what the First Amendment protects. Like it or hate it, Lalo's cartoon is a classic example of a political opinion, stated cartoonishly, in reaction to public facts. You may disagree with Lalo's suggestion that the bus-screamers were racists, or that their behavior is fairly attributable to the community of Murrieta, but nobody with the most minimal grasp of defamation law or the First Amendment would think it's an actionable false statement of fact.

Under the familiar Streisand Effect, this buffoonish threat will probably draw far more attention to the comic, draw more negative attention to city leadership ("we paid tax dollars to hire this cretin?"), and make the media substantially more hostile, if that is possible. One thing is for certain: it will not promote any intelligent debate on immigration whatsover.

You would think that a "Crisis Manager" would understand the Streisand Effect, wouldn't you?

Last 5 posts by Ken White