Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Cashill complained in his Nov. 15 WorldNetDaily column:
Ever since professional snitch John Dean ratted out Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in 1976 for an overheard racial joke, we've known that certain forms of humor can get one canned.
With the recent conviction of internet jokester Doug Mackey for passing along an anti-Hillary meme, we now know that a joke can get one imprisoned.
The slope from getting fired for joking about a state official to getting jailed has been slippery and steep.
[...]
In the months before the 2016 election he passed along a meme he found online titled, "Save Time, Avoid the Line." The meme featured a smiling image of Hillary Clinton and directed readers to text their vote to a made-up number.
Four years later, within a week after the 2021 inauguration, Mackey was rudely snapped from his sleep by a crew of 10 law enforcement officers, including four FBI agents, banging on his door at 7 a.m.
In March 2023, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Mackey of "Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote." He was sentenced to seven months in prison.
Cashill is dishonestly simplifying the case and omitting inconvenient details to make Mackey look like an innocent victim. As we documented when fellow WND columnist Rachel Alexander tried to make the same argument, Mackey is an alt-right Twitter troll who posted under the name Ricky Vaughn; he also said that women shouldn't be allowed to vote and that black people are easily deceived. That last point is important to illustrate what he did, as reported by a more reliable media outlet:
Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.
At about the same time, prosecutors said, he was sending tweets suggesting that it was important to limit “black turnout” at voting booths. One tweet he sent showed a photo of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign, encouraging people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” court papers said.
Using social media pitches, one image encouraging phony votes utilized a font similar to one used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads, prosecutors said. Others tried to mimic Clinton’s ads in other ways, they added.
By Election Day in 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said.
Compare that to how Cashill briefly and misleadingly described what Mackey did. Cashill offered no evidence that Mackey's actions were an obvious "joke"; indeed, Mackey's own defense didn't even make that claim, instead trying to frame what he did as "shitposting," which the Southern Poverty Law Center defines as "an internet term of art for publishing inflammatory content that is protected by the First Amendment."
Cashill went on to attempt whataboutism:
On Election Day, Nov. 8, 2016, Kristina Wong tweeted out a video of herself saying, "Hey Trump Supporters! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday!"
In the video, wearing a MAGA hat, Wong makes a direct appeal to black and Asian voters to text in their votes. She was obviously joking.
As we also noted when Alexander did the same thing, Wong is an actual comedian while Mackey is not.
Cashill also went off on a different tangent, lamenting that people no longer find racism funny:
In 2018, comedienne Roseanne Barr, the star of the reboot of the popular TV show "Roseanne," famously tweeted that the mixed-race, Iranian-born Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett looked like "the muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby."
ABC promptly canceled the show. Comedians had been saying the most vile things imaginable about Donald Trump without consequence, but Obama's people were, as Barr learned, off limits.
Shocked by the show's cancellation and undoubtedly guided by her press agents, Roseanne tweeted, "Don't feel sorry for me, guys!! I just want to apologize to the hundreds of people and wonderful writers (all liberal) and talented actors who lost their jobs on my show due to my stupid tweet."
In a police state, the accused cannot expect her friends and colleagues to rally to her defense. The "Roseanne" cast lived down to expectations.
"Roseanne's recent comments about Valerie Jarrett, and so much more, are abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show," tweeted Sara Gilbert, one of the several cast members who dumped on Roseanne publicly.
Having permanently severed Roseanne from her own show, ABC restarted the show as "The Conners." Without a word of support for the woman who gave them their careers, the original cast blithely picked up where they left off.
After a ritual apology got her nowhere – groveling never works – Roseanne offered a defense more keeping in character, "I thought the bitch was white."
Again, Cashill doesn't demonstrate that any of Barr's racist meltdowns were a "joke," let alone explain why anyone is supposed to find them funny. Then again, Cashill has been showing an increasing animus toward black people of late, defending white people charged with killing them and demonizing the victims.
