Political satire is now illegal in California — unless you plaster the word “satire” in big block letters on top of your work to make sure that not a single soul will assume what you write is true.
California has passed a law banning “deceptive media” in advertisements and “other election communications,” which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) touted as being focused on the use of generative artificial intelligence in political ads. Newsom pursued this law on the back of a parody election advertisement video in which artificial intelligence was used to recreate Vice President Kamala Harris’s voice. In the “ad,” fake Harris trashes President Joe Biden and brags about her own incompetence and how she is a deep state puppet.
According to Newsom, no one could possibly tell that the video is a parody and that the person speaking isn’t really Harris. Like most Democrats, Newsom thinks voters are too stupid to think without big bright warning labels on every piece of media they consume. Thus, California law now mandates, among other things, that satire content carry big labels that announce it as satire if the content is about “A candidate for any federal, state, or local elected office in California” and is published “120 days before any election in California.”
Specifically, it mandates that written satire include a big label that “this has been manipulated” that matches the biggest font size used in the content. For satirical or parody audio, “this audio has been manipulated” must be loudly announced at the beginning and end of the audio, and even interrupt the audio at various points if it is longer than two minutes because Newsom thinks people might forget that satire warning at the beginning of the audio if it is longer than a TikTok video.
How else will you be able to tell if “Source Says Kamala Was Promoted At McDonald’s After Having Affair With Mayor McCheese” or “Kamala Announces Construction Of ‘Murderers Only’ Express Lane At Southern Border” are satirical headlines or not? Those two headlines come from the Babylon Bee, a satirical site that is now suing California over this law.
Presumably, the Babylon Bee does not think that people are so dumb that they will believe “Newsom Issues Ban On Legal-Citizen Voting” without interrupting every paragraph to tell readers that the content is satirical. Then again, there are nearly 6.5 million people who voted for the governor in the 2022 election, so they may be taking their chances with that argument.
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All of this is really an attempt by Newsom to violate free speech rights in an effort to block criticism of him and other Democrats. It’s a personal vendetta, started because he didn’t like that a funny video making fun of Harris was made and then shared by X owner Elon Musk. After all, California under Newsom is all about “freedom,” at least until you make a video of a fake version of a Democrat making fun of themselves to make people on social media laugh.
This in itself would be funny if it wasn’t happening because the governor and Democratic legislature of the largest state in the country wanted to ban content making fun of them. On the bright side, Newsom is as good at banning speech as he is at managing the basic functions of California’s government, which means this effort will fail in spectacular fashion like everything else he has done.
