John Whitehead's Commentary
What's in a Name, Anyway? Falwell and the Fight for His Good Name
Visit www.jerryfalwell.com, and you might read a sermon-like diatribe against hypocrisy that ends with an appeal to Americans to follow the entire Bible because it is the word of God.
To many, it might sound like something Reverend Falwell, the father of the Moral Majority, would say. But read a little further in the sermon posted on Gary Cohn's parody website, and the logic takes a turn for the ludicrous: If "God has commanded men not to shave their beards (Leviticus 21:5)," then the sermonizer rationalizes that "we must never cut or trim our beards, or we will go to hell for disobeying God." The rationale ends with a plea for all American men to stop shaving at once, to "show God that we are faithful to ALL of his commandments."
Suddenly, the joke's on you for falling for such a line in the first place. Or maybe the joke's on Falwell--for making his occasional broad-based statements without thinking them through carefully. Or, as one animation on the site suggests, for putting his foot in his mouth one too many times.
Unfortunately, Falwell's not laughing. In fact, he's so unamused by Cohn's parody website that he turned his lawyers loose on Cohn, demanding that he cease and desist using Falwell's name as the butt of his jokes.
When that didn't work (Cohn called it "cyberbullying"), Falwell filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, the international referee for Internet domain name disputes, claiming Cohn was in violation of a common-law trademark on his name. "A person's own name," declared Falwell, "particularly in the case of a minister, cannot be stolen by persons who promote a lifestyle, i.e. the gay and lesbian lifestyle, which the pastor does not agree with."
But in the case of this particular minister--whose name has become a household word in the U.S.--WIPO sided with Cohn on the grounds that Falwell had failed to prove his name was a commercial commodity. While the panel suggested that Falwell might have a case under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, they saw no reason to prevent Cohn, who sells electric lawnmowers in Illinois, from continuing his Falwell parody site since it wasn't being used for financial gain.
Undaunted, the man of the cloth from Lynchburg, Va., insists he will take his case to court. In the process, Falwell, like others before him, seems to be playing right into Cohn's hands by generating more publicity for www.jerryfalwell.com than it might ever have garnered on its own.
The site first created to poke fun at Falwell for accusing abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians of being in some way responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks has now become a battle flag in the debate over free speech on the Internet. The genius of the Internet revolution is that it gives average people, such as Cohn, the chance to speak out. Whether the creation of various Internet websites was motivated by hate, jealousy, admiration, disapproval or distrust, the point is they give the average citizen a chance to vent their feelings in a public forum.
It is undeniable that Falwell's comments last fall raised the ire of a nation still in shock and deep in mourning. So it was no surprise that he became the object of "affection" for stand-up comedians who pulled no punches.
In his introduction to the awards page of one political humor website that blessed Falwell with a Dubious Award for Best Impersonation of an Insane Fundamentalist Cleric, Daniel Kurtzman wrote, "They told us irony was dead. We feared we'd never laugh again. But then along came Jerry Falwell, Geraldo Rivera, 'Evil Bert,' and John Walker to open the comic floodgates."
And that's really what Cohn's website is all about--providing a comic forum for the bigger questions and disturbing realities that haunt us all. As Eric Idle of Monty Python fame stated:
At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
If Falwell doesn't like the attention he's been attracting over the years--from his belief that Teletubbies character Tinky Winky is gay, to his battles against Hustler magazine--then maybe he should learn to temper his words. If that's not a viable possibility, he should at least learn to take a joke, which is what Cohn's site is--a tongue-in-cheek prodding at a well-known public figure that more often than not shoots from the hip.
After all, even God had a sense of humor. He created humans, didn't he?
To many, it might sound like something Reverend Falwell, the father of the Moral Majority, would say. But read a little further in the sermon posted on Gary Cohn's parody website, and the logic takes a turn for the ludicrous: If "God has commanded men not to shave their beards (Leviticus 21:5)," then the sermonizer rationalizes that "we must never cut or trim our beards, or we will go to hell for disobeying God." The rationale ends with a plea for all American men to stop shaving at once, to "show God that we are faithful to ALL of his commandments."
Suddenly, the joke's on you for falling for such a line in the first place. Or maybe the joke's on Falwell--for making his occasional broad-based statements without thinking them through carefully. Or, as one animation on the site suggests, for putting his foot in his mouth one too many times.
Unfortunately, Falwell's not laughing. In fact, he's so unamused by Cohn's parody website that he turned his lawyers loose on Cohn, demanding that he cease and desist using Falwell's name as the butt of his jokes.
When that didn't work (Cohn called it "cyberbullying"), Falwell filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, the international referee for Internet domain name disputes, claiming Cohn was in violation of a common-law trademark on his name. "A person's own name," declared Falwell, "particularly in the case of a minister, cannot be stolen by persons who promote a lifestyle, i.e. the gay and lesbian lifestyle, which the pastor does not agree with."
But in the case of this particular minister--whose name has become a household word in the U.S.--WIPO sided with Cohn on the grounds that Falwell had failed to prove his name was a commercial commodity. While the panel suggested that Falwell might have a case under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, they saw no reason to prevent Cohn, who sells electric lawnmowers in Illinois, from continuing his Falwell parody site since it wasn't being used for financial gain.
Undaunted, the man of the cloth from Lynchburg, Va., insists he will take his case to court. In the process, Falwell, like others before him, seems to be playing right into Cohn's hands by generating more publicity for www.jerryfalwell.com than it might ever have garnered on its own.
The site first created to poke fun at Falwell for accusing abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians of being in some way responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks has now become a battle flag in the debate over free speech on the Internet. The genius of the Internet revolution is that it gives average people, such as Cohn, the chance to speak out. Whether the creation of various Internet websites was motivated by hate, jealousy, admiration, disapproval or distrust, the point is they give the average citizen a chance to vent their feelings in a public forum.
It is undeniable that Falwell's comments last fall raised the ire of a nation still in shock and deep in mourning. So it was no surprise that he became the object of "affection" for stand-up comedians who pulled no punches.
In his introduction to the awards page of one political humor website that blessed Falwell with a Dubious Award for Best Impersonation of an Insane Fundamentalist Cleric, Daniel Kurtzman wrote, "They told us irony was dead. We feared we'd never laugh again. But then along came Jerry Falwell, Geraldo Rivera, 'Evil Bert,' and John Walker to open the comic floodgates."
And that's really what Cohn's website is all about--providing a comic forum for the bigger questions and disturbing realities that haunt us all. As Eric Idle of Monty Python fame stated:
At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
If Falwell doesn't like the attention he's been attracting over the years--from his belief that Teletubbies character Tinky Winky is gay, to his battles against Hustler magazine--then maybe he should learn to temper his words. If that's not a viable possibility, he should at least learn to take a joke, which is what Cohn's site is--a tongue-in-cheek prodding at a well-known public figure that more often than not shoots from the hip.
After all, even God had a sense of humor. He created humans, didn't he?
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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