April 3 marked the 50th anniversary of Lenny Bruce’s arrest in New York on obscenity charges. His crime? Using phrases such as “jack me off,” “nice tits,” and “go come in a chicken” in his stand up routine. Within the…
Category: Features
Recent Studies Negate Idea that Violence in Video Games Causes Real World Violence
Despite overwhelming evidence otherwise, violent video games have long been a scapegoat for politicians, pundits, and more when discussing the causes of real world violence. Two recent studies have added to the evidence that strongly contradicts the idea that the…
Cartoon Mysteriously Removed from Revolution News Facebook Page
On April 3, 2014, Revolution News published an article containing three Carlos Latuff political cartoons. One cartoon in particular caused the article to be removed from Facebook, where the news site shared a link to the posting. The cartoon featured…
Washington Post Pulls Pearls Before Swine Strip
Last Sunday, Washington Post readers might have been surprised to find a rerun of the popular Pearls Before Swine comic strip in the print edition of the paper. The paper decided to pull the strip over the use of one…
RADIO FREE COMIX: Annoucing the CBLDF Podcast!
Continuing our ongoing education work, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund makes the move into the AUDIO-SPHERE! Available streaming below or downloadable via iTunes, we’re delighted to introduce the CBLDF Podcast! A mix of interviews, discussions about current Free Speech…
First Salvos in the Culture Wars: Advancing American Art and the Comics Backlash
This week, we came across a very interesting art exhibit that recreates an exhibit that was censored in the late 1940s, around the same time that the backlash against comics was gathering steam in the U.S. Looking into the saga…
Using Graphic Novels in Education: Pretty in Ink and Bad Girls
Welcome to Using Graphic Novels in Education, an ongoing feature from CBLDF that is designed to allay confusion around the content of graphic novels and to help parents and teachers raise readers. In this column, we examine graphic novels, including…
April 4: Join the Day of Action Against Censorship in Libraries!
On April 4, the National Coalition Against Censorship — of which CBLDF is a member — is partnering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Civic Media at MIT to protest censorship in libraries. Dubbed 404 Day, April…
Cartoonists Play Role in Protest Against Turkey’s Block of Twitter
In this day and age, you’d think that politicians would recognize that technology-savvy users will always find a way around attempts to ban popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Turkey’s attempt to block the latter certainly backfired,…
Politician Who Sponsored Law Struck Down by Brown v. EMA Arrested on Corruption Charges
Until recently, most of us here at CBLDF could only claim to know State Senator Leland Yee of California as the man behind the law struck down by the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. EMA. As of this week,…