“HUMOR UNDER ATTACK: PARODY, CANCEL CULTURE, AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT”

Friday, April 7, 2023
7:30 pm – 9 pm

Synopsis

Humor and satire have been a part of American political discourse since British soldiers sang “Yankee Doodle” to make fun of colonial forces.  It’s so much a part of American culture that it’s built into the First Amendment of the Constitution.  It’s as American as, well, Huckleberry Finn.  These days, however, when United States Senators sue fictional cows for parody accounts on Twitter and the Onion feels compelled to write an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, is that proof that we’ve lost our sense of humor?  Is cancel culture incompatible with First Amendment freedoms? 

Lawyer, judge, and award-winning humor writer Lori B. Duff (in her spare time, she’s President of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists) takes us through the constitutional history of satire up through the Supreme Court’s current term (there’s that Onion brief again), all while trying not to get herself canceled as a result.

Speaker Bio

Lori B. Duff is a graduate of Duke University and the Emory University School of Law. The Managing Partner of Jones & Duff, LLC, she is also a municipal court judge and the Immediate Past President of the Georgia Council of Municipal Court Judges. She serves on several committees on the Council of Municipal Court Judges and the Georgia State Bar.

In addition to her legal acumen, Lori is an award-winning writer. She is the 2020 Gold Medal Foreword Indies Award Winner for Humor as well as the National Society for Newspaper Columnists First Place winner for Humor. In 2022 and 2023 she won the Georgia Bar Journal’s Annual Fiction Competition. She currently serves as the President of the National Society for Newspaper Columnists.

Her novel, a courtroom drama titled “True North”, will be released in the fall of 2024 by She Writes Press. She lives in Loganville, Georgia with her husband, her two children having flown the nest.