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ACLU Defends Talking Penis

Posted on June 15, 2005

I know what you are thinking…and no…it was not one of their own lawyers.

“Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the show’s producer & host Timothy Huffman had argued that the three minute “Dick Smart” show segment, aired only twice on public access cable channel GRTV in the city of Grand Rapids five years ago, was protected speech under the US first amendment“.Source

First Amendment right you see? Our forefather’s wrote the first amendment to protect people to have the right to show their privates to the world!

“Wednesday’s ruling contained a transcript of the three-minute segment that aired twice in 2000, including the voice-over lines delivered in the style of the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield: “Hi, I’m Dick Smart. I am a comedian, yeah, stand up, ha.”

“A three-minute segment of Huffman’s Friday-night half-hour show on GRTV, the public access channel in Grand Rapids, Mich., featured a penis with a face painted on it delivering bar jokes. Instead of invoking TV-obscenity prohibitions, Kent County prosecutors concluded that the segment violated Michigan’s indecent-exposure law“.Source

See, to the ACLU this was a “free speech” issue. I however think that a cable-access channel is a “public place” and that exposure was conduct, not free speech. What do you think? Do penis’s have the right to free speech?

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One Response to “ACLU Defends Talking Penis”

  1. Stevo on February 2nd, 2006 10:36 am

    There is a common sense distinction between reality and photographic depiction of reality on TV (or another medium.)

    For example, near an abortion clinic, pro-life demonstrators were prosecuted in Michigan for carrying placards with graphic photos of aborted fetuses. Prosecutors theorized that there was no difference between doiong that and assaulting passersby with actual aborted fetuses.
    The courts disagreed and tossed ot the case.
    The same principle applies to Huffman. A cable TV subscriber is not the victim of a sex crime. If the First Amendment means any thing, then it applies to even our worst citizen.
    (Remember, Huffman was not charged with obscenity.)
    It was a late night, non-obscene cable TV show.
    There is no danger of being attacked by the penis puppet. As Thomas Edison said, the image is an illusion of motion created by a series of still photographs.
    “Relax, it is just a movie.”

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