
Posts Tagged Bernie Sanders
Vermont’s Montpelier Times Argus had the audacity to disparage my favorite presidential candidate in a recent editorial. I had no choice but to to show up at their offices with 900 words of gasoline!
UPDATE: By popular demand, for all you fr’ners who can’t read the Times Argus overseas, here is the text of the editorial.
Believe in Bernie
Recently, The Times Argus and Rutland Herald ran an editorial imploring Sen. Bernie Sanders not to run again for president in 2020. The arguments against his candidacy amounted to the same “perhaps in another time, another place” laments that were so often deployed against Sanders in 2016.
At first, I was pained to see this overly cautious attitude being presented as wisdom, but then I felt a spark of hope: At least, this time they are getting it out of their system early.
During the 2016 primary season that saw Hillary Clinton triumph over Sanders as the country’s progressive standard-bearer, one editorial after another warned of Sanders’ unviability in the general election: too old, too cantankerous, not risk-averse enough and wielding an agenda out of some hippie’s dream journal. The thinking went that this veritable outlaw of idealism could never conquer the imaginations of hidebound, dry toast America.
Donald Trump, the proof of the failed theory of the “hot potato candidate,” now squats in the Oval Office, firing off incoherent tweets hourly, plotting executive end-runs around the will of Congress … and enjoying a disturbing level of popularity for it. He may soon be selecting his third Supreme Court justice.
So, I am happy that the anti-Sanders sentiment that is brewing among many progressives is arriving sooner rather than later. Hopefully, they will get over their cold feet quickly, because we need Sanders now more than ever.
After Barack Obama’s re-election triumph over Mitt Romney on Election Night 2012, Democrats mocked the “bubble mentality” of conservatives who had deluded themselves about Romney’s strength. Today, it is the Democrats who are in a bubble, certain that Trump fatigue and Robert Mueller will pave the way for a safe, Beltway liberal to return us to normalcy. They have grown so cocky, in fact, that they can barely contain their glee at clipping the wings of upstart Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, herself an early warning sign of a restive progressive base.
But, who today could trust the Democrats to read the tea leaves correctly? Trump has proven himself to be a poll-defying master of electronic media, a creature custom-built for the empty, ratings-driven TV show of presidential politics. In 2020, his eccentricities will be more than offset by the power of his office and his complete control over a neutered Republican Party that he has broken to his will.
Now look at who Nancy Pelosi and the donor class would have us ooze over: Joe Biden, the 76-year-old perennial bridesmaid with a #MeToo target on his chest; Elizabeth Warren, once the Great White Hope of the slightly left-of-center, but now publicly owned by Trump’s schoolyard taunts; and Beto O’Rourke, a typical Third Way Dem who hopes that being a cool, purple-state Fonzie will compensate for his unambitious program. If one of these “safe bets” is standing underneath the balloons when they drop at the DNC convention, God help us.
Which brings us back to Sanders. Few can argue with his charm or his fidelity to the causes that liberals often only pay lip service to. But then comes that fear of the unknown, of Sanders as the divider of the already “well-fractured Democratic Party” (to quote this newspaper).
It’s time liberals ask themselves what they are really afraid of: Sanders as a wedge, or Sanders as the glue?
Take health care. After decades of tinkering at the edges of reform, Democrats finally gave us the Affordable Care Act, a conservative, think-tanked solution that is riddled with all the errors and inefficiencies that naturally flow from placating the health insurance industry. The ACA is now a moving target, always on the brink of being sabotaged. And it would be … except for the fact that the public — left and right — actually wants more of what the ACA has promised.
But, while the half-a-loaf Democrats continue to appease an obsolete health care bureaucracy, it is the Sanders wing that unapologetically states the obvious: that the inevitable endgame must be Medicare for all.
Sanders’ position on that topic is the unity position. His is the clear voice rising above a din of confusing non-solutions. The “division” that concerns liberals is simply the fear of a leader sticking to his guns while his party wrings its hands. But, so what? Our country has already shown that it has patience to spare when it comes to Trump’s tantrums over his concrete border monstrosity; I think we’ll be just fine with a little friction in service of universal health insurance.
Now is the time for liberals to make their peace with the left, not the other way around. The left will not be press-ganged into obedience in 2020 simply because “the stakes are too high.” When aren’t the stakes too high? The Democrats have lived in terror of a leftist candidate since George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon. The specter of that loss even led Rolling Stone magazine to repent of its youthful arrogance and declare for Clinton over Sanders in 2016, because “America chooses its presidents from the middle, not from the ideological wings.”
Rolling Stone spoke on behalf of all of America’s benighted centrists when it chose not to endorse Sanders’ “intoxicating … great hopes and dreams.” Instead, it put its chips on Clinton’s soaring “incremental progress.” Now, thanks to the ideology of almighty caution, Clinton’s loss has become the new standard for political miscalculation. At last, McGovern’s ghost can rest.
You can try to diminish Sanders by calling him a rumpled symbol for hopeless dreamers. You can call him an imprudent spoiler. You can curse his movement’s “purity testing” while trying to torpedo his reputation over some small-bore indiscretions by his campaign staff … it isn’t going to work. Yes, Sanders is an idealist. And in 2020, the race had better have at least one of them.
Jason Yungbluth is the author of the graphic novel “Weapon Brown,†and an adjunct professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.
The world’s most red-hot political controversy continues! But not here. Here we are talking about fukkin’ T-shirts.
So, if you remember from an earlier post, last week I took umbrage with the coverage that an online T-shirt retailer, Liberty Maniacs, was receiving as they fended off a complaint from a lawyer representing the campaign of Bernie Sanders. Liberty Maniacs has created a T-shirt incorporating a barely transfigured version of the trademarked Sanders campaign logo, and dressed it up in the noble garb of “parody”, which is, of course, protected speech. Half a zillion websites rushed to the defense of Liberty Maniacs, calling Bernie Sanders a crusty old cocksucker with no sense of humor, and why can’t his high powered lawyers–from WALL STREET?!? Wouldn’t that be fucking IRONIC!–just leave Liberty Maniacs alone to sell their knockoffs of Mr. Robot merchandise in peace?
Now, I loves me some parody, and I am not saying that what Liberty Maniacs has done isn’t necessarily fair use of the logo. Under the law, there are many kinds of fair use of protected trademarks. But I am dubious as to whether what Liberty Maniacs has done is genuine parody.
To drive that point home, I created a T-shirt mock-up that incorporated Liberty Maniacs’ own trademarked logo, and contacted the company’s owner, Dan McCall, asking if he would consider my shirt to be parody or infringement. I also posted a link to our resulting exchange on the website of the lawyer defending Liberty Maniacs, one Paul Levy of Public Citizen, a non-profit citizen’s advocacy group.
Paul contacted me through my website and by e-mail, and we eventually spoke on the phone. Although he apparently has no horse in the race as to whether my T-shirt scheme is itself a parody, he had a lot to say about Liberty Maniacs’ work, as he has defended them several times (successfully) against claims like the one the Sanders campaign’s lawyer is making.
Paul then sent me a detailed commentary on this matter, which also touched on our personal conversations. Here is what he had to say, with my ripostes spliced in. (Note: most of Paul’s comments can also be found in a blog on his own web page.)
…
You have gone seriously astray in three respects. First, you are apparently focused on ways in which people do parodies of logos – certainly if it is the logo that is being parodied, then you make changes in the logo. But if the objective is to parody the trademark owner, then by all means the logo can be used to identify the trademark owner. We often see that with respect to attacks on Barack Obama, which use his familiar Obama rising sun logo, unchanged, in the context of disagreeable criticism (for example, here and here. Similarly, we often see attacks on Wal-Mart, using its familiar blue-block name with a star in the middle, perhaps with the cursive Always across it, but coupled with words that express disdain for what Wal-Mart “always†does (for example here  and here). Similarly. what McCall did here is use the Sanders campaign’s logo to make clear which “Bernie†is the target of his design’s commentary, and he does it in a way that poses no likelihood of confusion about whether the campaign is behind it.
I think the critical issue here is the meaning of the word “parody”. Paul seems to be conflating it with another, related term: “satire”. Parody is specifically about transfiguring what is recognizeable to give it new meaning or expression. The examples he cites do indeed use all or part of a famous trademark, but the resulting parody turns the trademarked graphic against itself to comment on the mark’s owner. So Obama’s “O” becomes a letter in the term “B.O.”, which are the President’s initials, but also the abbreviation for body odor. The completed comment, “B.O. Stinks”, is then obviously a clever political commentary, but one that would lose much of its content and worth without the benefit of the Obama logo.
Likewise, the use of the Wal-Mart logo in the other examples leaves the graphic “Wal-Mart” alone, but then lampoons another part of Wal-Mart’s advertisements, the text and graphic regarding Wal-Mart’s “always low prices”. Taken as a whole, the trademark has been parodied, and through it, Wal-Mart has been ridiculed. The message could have been delivered using the same words but not the existing graphics, but the message would lack any punch.
In the case of Liberty Maniacs, the entire Sanders logo is intact except for a tiny change to a small graphic of a star, changing it into something resembling a Soviet star. Is that enough to call it a parody? Perhaps. But this is a very meager innovation, and if the Sanders logo were put on a T-shirt alone with only that small change, it is doubtful most people would recognize the innuendo.
The T-shirt thus requires more than just the Sanders logo to sell the message, so a cartoon of Sanders’ face alongside the faces of famous communists is added, as well as a tag line under the logo that reads “is my comrade” (Collectively, “Sanders is my comrade”). But the term “is my comrade” refers to nothing in the existing logo (the true Sanders logo does not say “Sanders is my” anything.) Therefor, this additional text is not like the Wal-Mart example where “Wal-Mart’s low prices” becomes “Wal-Mart’s low wages.”
But for the tiny modification of the star, the Sanders logo has not, in any real way, been turned against itself. Sanders is being called a communist, in so many words, which does mock his avowed socialism, but nothing about the Sanders logo is necessary for the gag. There is already a picture of Bernie on the shirt, and that plus any use of the name “Bernie” in any typeface would sell the message. The use of the trademark does evoke Bernie Sanders, but no more than his own name does. That is why the shirt, though plausibly a satire (i.e. a jest of Sanders’ affiliation with a movement often viewed negatively in a democratic country) is not really a parody of anything.
In short:
1) The logo itself is not being parodied.
2) The trademark is not being used to comment on the mark’s owner.
3) The use of the logo is not beneficial to the humor or the political content of the shirt.
Second, your blog post and particularly your chat incorrectly suggest that you need “permission†from a trademark owner to do a parody using its logo. That is a foolish suggestion: parody is protected both by the fair use defense to the Lanham Act and by the First Amendment; indeed, when a parody is plainly a parody, it does not create an actionable likelihood of confusion (if the mark is “famous,†then dilution considerations come into play and the analysis is a bit different).
I am well aware, of course, that one does not seek “permission” for parody. My conversation with Liberty Maniacs owner Dan McCall was simply to suss out whether he considered the explicit and unaltered use of his own company logo on an unflattering T-shirt to be parody or infringement. My conversation, if anything, made plain MY view: that it would be infringement–at least in this context–and that I thought I should get his permission before I pulled what he pulled with the Sanders logo. If McCall said that he didn’t mind, then at least he would be consistent.
(FYI: after sending the mock-up to McCall, he has offered me no opinion on whether he thinks it is parody, and certainly no permission to play with his logo even if he thinks it is not.)
In fact, although your reproduction of the “chat†you conducted with Dan McCall elides this part of the conversation, McCall told you exactly that. I was a bit suspicious and so I asked both you and McCall about that. When we spoke on the phone, you equivocated but ultimately denied having been told by McCall that you did not need permission. However, McCall has supplied me with an unexpurgated version of the chat, and at the location where your image of the chat says “a bit of the chat got lost when my computer crashed,†he told you that, if what you were doing was a parody, you didn’t need his permission. Certainly that was a convenient “computer crash.†But I do not appreciate the fact that you lied to me when we spoke.
Let me tell you something, people: if you ever find yourself running an online store that sells cheap merchandise entirely dependent on parasitizing pop culture, Paul Levy is the kind of prick you want on your side when the owners of the intellectual property you’ve pirated come kicking in your door. (I’m already saving up for his retainer!)
I did speak to Paul on the phone, and suffice it to say I have never had anyone so aggressively try to buffalo me, and I’m from Buffalo. But when I finally did make Paul stick a sock in it long enough for me to get a word in edgewise, he immediately hung up on me like a common pussy.
Finally, you have asked me a number of times to tell me whether “my client†objects to your what you characterize as a “hilarious parody.†I have tried to explain to you that I am not McCall’s general counsel. I have represented him a few times to defend some of his parodies. I have never represented me in affirmative enforcement of HIS intellectual property. And he has not asked me for help in addressing your design,; thus I have no occasion to address whether you have done a parody.
In fact, to my knowledge, McCall has done nothing to stop you. Whether that is because he thinks what you are doing is a protected parody, or whether it is because he thinks you are making a play for attention by trying to bait him into objecting so that you can make a stink about it, you would have to ask him.
Far be it from me to make a play for attention, since I could never hope to top the skills of Paul’s client, who has used the occasion of the cease and desist order he received from the Sanders campaign to blast the world with cries of injustice that would make a Syrian refugee weep. I would never hesitate to defend those products of McCall’s that featured the craft or wit necessary to rise to the level of honest parody. It’s an easy bar to reach, but one that I am not convinced Dan has cleared.
Yesterday I came across this article from the Daily Beast written  by Tim Mak, a “senior correspondent”  for that organization (I believe this only means that he combs news sites and writes about what other reporters have dug up, like a common blogger). The nub of his story was that Bernie Sanders’ lawyers have asked a T-shirt company, Liberty Maniacs, to stop using the Sanders campaign logo in a T-shirt that the company is selling online. Here’s their artwork, and below it the official Sanders campaign logo:
The T-shirt isn’t that funny, but whatever. It’s nothing a presidential campaign should lose sleep over. But what struck me was how pissy the Daily Beast’s article was, making Sanders out as some kind of trademark troll without a sense of humor. Several times in Mak’s piece the Sanders campaign is referred to as a “bully” using “high-priced lawyers” to intimidate a small business. Isn’t comrade Sanders supposed to be above these things?
As a guy who knows a thing or two about parody and trademark, the fact is that lawyers don’t give a rat’s ass about jokes at the expense of their clients. But if you are going to call their client (who is running for president) a totalitarian dictator, in so many words, you had at least better make an effort to alter the logo that the commie in question is using to sell himself. Liberty Maniacs didn’t really make that effort. In contrast, another, funnier shirt they are selling is an actual parody of the Sanders logo, and one that has not earned them a cease and desist letter.
Like the wise capitalist peegs they are, Liberty Maniacs is using the press to hype their contested shirts and hopefully make a killing. This got me thinking: as long as liberating someone else’s trademark is all in good fun, would Liberty Maniacs libertarians be willing to be the butt of the same joke?
With a self-tighteous boner as hard as steel, I contacted Liberty Maniacs and spoke to a representative named “Dan” through their live chat service. Here is our conversation:
I then sent them a picture of the T-shirt I am now itching to produce, along with my assurance that if they consider this to be some sort of trademark infringement and not rib-tickling parody, I will not print any of them up.
How will Liberty Maniacs deal with this delicious helping of gander sauce? I will report back to you with their response! In the meantime: $18.00 for small through large, $20.00 for 2XL and 3XL.