Catch Me if You Can

Making love to his ego,
Ziggy sucked up into his mind
--Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie

machismo is not foreign policy
--Obama the Gambler, Fareed Zakaria
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The "next great First Amendment battle" will involve muzzling free speech in the case of a man accused of compiling and selling films of dog fights, in violation of a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.”

Though video maker Robert J. Stevens had nothing to do with the dogfights themselves, his films earned him a 37-month sentence (Free Speech Battle Arises From Dog Fighting Videos), 14 months longer than that of football player Michael Vick who actually participated in the dog fighting, which is illegal in the U.S. (Mr. Vick first denied, then admitted to personally killing a half-dozen wounded losers.)

Two of the films show pit bulls in dogfighting events, and the third, 'Catch Dogs and Country Living,' "shows pit bulls being trained to attack hogs and then hunting wild boar. The encounters are gory and brutal. Mr. Stevens participated in the hunting and filmed parts of the third video, which bears some resemblance to nature documentaries," according to the NYT.

"The law has an odd history. It was enacted in large part to address what a House report called 'a very specific sexual fetish.' There are people, it seems, who enjoy watching videos of small animals being crushed."

When Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, he instructed justice to limit prosecutions to “wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.” He was concerned about First Amendment intrusions, and the "crush" videos are certainly disturbing, analogous as they are to pornographic snuff films.

But these are not crush films. "The law applies to audio and video recordings of 'conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.' It does not matter whether the conduct was legal when and where it occurred so long as it would have been illegal where the recording was sold." Catch dog hunting, though sometimes brutal, is legal in much of the U.S.

The Times notes that the government has unsuccessfully tried to ban "depictions of violence against people, notably in videogames. But those laws are routinely struck down, and the Supreme Court has never ruled that speech about nonsexual violence is beyond the protection of the First Amendment."

This case illustrates one of the hypocrisies of our legal system: Bad things can happen, but as long as we don't see it on film, in the wrong municipality, all is copacetic. Bad policy on a personal level, but irreconcilable on a legal one.

Gun shops and the Hunting Channel routinely show bloody depictions of animals being gunned down, often suffering terribly before death, by brave white hunters. These videos are often produced by weapons manufacturers, as a come-on to purchase their products.

Why are these productions legal, while Mr. Stevens's is not?

Why not extend the description of gruesome film depictions of the "intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed" to the brutality depicted in the war pornography of Saddam Hussein's hanging, or that of the bullet-riddled and bloodied bodies of his sons Qusay and Uday, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi featured in news magazines like Time and Newsweek?

While not exactly Oscar material, current You Tubes like al Zarqawi is Eliminated -- which panders to the Limbaugh crowd -- show our hypocrisy in action. We like to watch violence. Boxing is an Olympic sport.

Why do we pretend to care about criminal behavior in relation to animal cruelty when our behavior to our fellow humans is anything but kind?

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