“Lampooning our Leaders is as American as Apple Pie”

After comedian Michelle Wolf was criticized following her performance at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner last week, Newhouse professor Roy Gutterman took to Syracuse.com to defend her words.

“Lampooning our leaders is as American as apple pie, baseball or campaign contributions. The Supreme Court has agreed,” he wrote. “In an important case, Hustler v. Falwell (1988), the Supreme Court provided a history lesson in the role that satire has played in the democracy — from the country’s founding, with influential political cartoons as a form of dissent in the colonies, to mockeries of every president since, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.”