Negative stereotyping is as old as humanity. It probably went on in paleolithic caves. We have a caveman demographic in our society today, too, and it’s as busy as ever fabricating lies about tribes living a spear’s throw away. For example, lies about drag performers.
They can say pretty much anything they want to about drag performers, as long as they’re talking about “drag performers.” That’s protected by the First Amendment. But when they start talking about a drag performer, it better not be defamatory.
There’s a rightwing blogger in Post Falls, Idaho, named Summer Bushnell (photo, left), who accused Eric Posey, a drag performer, of exposing himself to a crowd with children during a Pride event in 2022. She knew that was a lie, and admitted it in her later testimony (see story here).
She even included “a doctored video of his performance that included a blurred spot that she claimed covered his ‘fully exposed genitals’” that she got from a videographer who recorded two of Posey’s performances, spliced them together, and blurred the image. She knew the video was fake, but posted it on her blog anyway.
“In reality the unedited video showed no indecent exposure, and prosecutors declined to file charges,” the Guardian says (read story here). But there was fallout for Posey, including death threats.
Uh-oh. That spelled legal trouble. Posey sued Bushnell for defamation, and the jury awarded him $1,176,000 in damages.
There’s lying aplenty in our tribal politics, especially from the right. Lying about public figures is considerably (but not totally) protected by the Sullivan doctrine, in the interest of not chilling political debate. But spreading lies about private individuals is easier to recover legal damages for. When you’re no longer lying about drag performers, but about a drag performer, you’re skating on thin ice, as Summer Bushnell found out the hard way.