You Can’t Caricature that Representative Here
Sometimes you wonder what these companies are thinking. Case in point: Mad magazine artist Tom Richmond drew 540 caricature’s of all the representatives and senators in the United States. Those caricatures where put on one of 12 bodies, which created” virtual bobbleheads,” and included in an iPhone app that gave contact information for “senators and congressional representative either via zip-code or by using the iPhone’s GPS location services.”
The information was good, the tool valuable, and you could shake the phone or flick the screen with your finger and make the heads bobble. A useful app with a fun interface. It is all well done, not nasty, and non-partisan. Head over to The Mad blog and see examples for yourself.
If your in the U.S. and thinking you’d like to get that app, sorry, Apple rejected it on the grounds it is “obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.” Obviously, it is, in their eyes, defamatory. A ridiculous assertion and a ridiculous decision. An app that might have helped get people more involved, and it is kiboshed because of John McCain’s exaggerated jowls.
John McCain’s exaggerated jowls can easily be construed as ridiculing a person for having a medical condition. Kind of like Cretin’s paralyzed half face. If John McCain were Canadian and a member of a privileged minority he would have great grounds to use the inHuman Rights Kangaroo courts to persecute whoever published such obscene hateful material. Of course since he is white, and even worse, conservative (at least slightly) the publicly funded denizens of neonazi hate sites would never champion his cause.
Not that i agree with Apple’s caricature rejection (it’s ridiculous) but perhaps the real reason is for it is more under “exploitation of an individual for commercial purposes”.
Even politicians have a right to protect themselves against unauthorized & uncompensated usage of their personages. First Amendment & free speech liberties, i.e., ‘Right of Publicity’ considerations doesn’t extend to profiting.
Not too long ago Schwarzenegger sued a bobble-head maker for just that:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/national/18arnold.html
..and although it would naturally seem that charicaturist Tom Richmond and his partner would be ultimately responsible for the content and thus any poss. litigation, Apple of course knows that it would be a richer target.