Republic of the Easily Offended, South American Edition

We’ve had a lot of cases pop up recently where the line was hard to draw, where the slope was slippery, or where the principles of the case were sound enough, but we still wouldn’t have wanted the exact events described to happen on our block. But there are also those events where we find ourselves shaking our heads at the antics of people who seem to have nothing better to do than take massive offense at every utterance that they think has the potential to cast them in a bad light, saying to ourselves “Come on, people; it was just a cream pie!” These are the events that make me want to re-name the society we live in as “The Republic of Nice” – as in we’re all required to be nice at all times or else! – or, less sarcastically, “The Republic of the Easily Offended…”

Although apparently we’re just the North American Republic of the Easily Offended; it would appear that other continents have their own version of our society. A story being reported today in The Associated Press online details a lawsuit being planned by The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation against a U.S. cartoonist and his syndication group over a cartoon that they feel "attacks the national dignity and the reputation of coffee from Colombia." The cartoon was one of a series printed last week that riffed on the story of the inventor of the Pringles can being buried in one, and included the comment that given the levels of violence observed in Colombia, perhaps the old sales slogan “There’s a little Juan Valdez in every can” should be taken literally…

The Federation is going to be seeking at least $20 million "for damage and harm, detriment to intellectual property and defamation.” Why, exactly, they feel that $20 million in harm has been done to them will be quite interesting to observe; why they feel they should be immune to the satire that every member of our society is subjected to should be even more so. There is no chance that any reasonable person would actually believe that Columbian coffee cans contain the slightest trace of human remains; there is also essentially no chance that anyone who has ever heard of Columbia doesn’t already know about the drug cartels and ongoing violence that have plagued that country. It is thus difficult to understand how this unassuming newspaper cartoon could actually harm the Federation’s business. And if there has been no damage to your business, you can’t demand money in compensation for that damage…

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that the Federation has no right to be irritated. Consider, for example, how you would feel if someone implied (even in jest) that your company’s products were tainted with traces of human remains. More to the point, the Federation has spent a vast amount of advertising establishing Columbian coffee as a brand, and we all know what happens if you don’t defend both your brand name and reputation against anyone who implies that it’s not worth what you’re charging for it. If the Federation ignores this once, it will be harder for them to quash the next joke made at their expense, and eventually their carefully-built (and expensive) brand name will just be another mixed-media joke, resulting in heaven only knows how much lost sales and lost revenue…

Clearly, the cartoonist in this story did not intend to create an international incident, let alone touch off a $20 million lawsuit naming both him and his syndicate as parties. As his response in the AP story makes abundantly clear, he merely thought it was an amusing reference to other world events during this same time, and did not expect anyone to notice, let alone take massive offense. But, just as clearly, this mostly harmless and certainly non-malicious joke was taken quite seriously by the people whose business, country, brand, and tag line he was mocking. Given the way U.S. civil laws regarding satire of public figures/groups are usually interpreted, it’s unlikely that this case will amount to much, even assuming the cartoon syndicate doesn’t just settle the matter and make it go away quietly. But it’s still something you might want to keep in mind before you make your next public joke at the expense of somebody’s business…