For many years now, as part of our work to resist the right wing politics of the Republican Party, we have sold bumper stickers, buttons, t-shirts and other stuff through which people can express their opposition to the Republican agenda. We sell through several channels, including Zazzle and Skreened. For this year’s election, we have operated a shop at CafePress called No GOP 2008.
We knew that the Republican Party wouldn’t like what we had to say at No GOP 2008, but we never imagined they would sue. After all, the Republicans are the ones who complain about frivolous lawsuits all the time, right?
Well, we got it wrong – about the Republicans and frivolous lawsuits, that is. Word came to us through CafePress today that the Republican National Committee is threatening suit in order to shut down our shop and other shops like it.
It seems that the Republican Party thinks that it’s just plain wrong, wrong, wrong for anyone to criticize them using the terms that are popularly used to refer to the Republicans: GOP, Grand Old Party, and RNC. The Republican Party is even threatening to sue because people use elephants in their criticisms of the Republican Party.
What’s next? Will the Republican National Committee insist that no one use the word “Republican” without their permission? Are we supposed to go around talking about how we disagree with the Bepublicans, out of fear that we’ll be sued?
All this reminds me of how Lord Voldemort went on in the Harry Potter books, trying to intimidate people from using his name. It’s as if the Republicans want to be referred to only as the political party who must not be named.
CafePress is saying that it is in negotiations with the Republican Party to try to avert the threatened lawsuit. We can’t know what the outcome of the lawsuit will be, of course. Will we be censored? Will we be forced to shut down our shop criticizing the Republicans?
Just in case, we are preparing some alternative terminology that skirts the proposed prohibition on actually mentioning the Republican Party when criticizing the Republican Party.
Instead of referring to the GOP, we’ll use these other nicknames:
TOP – for Totalitarian Old Party
BOP – for Banned Old Party
COP – for Censoring Old Party
Or, maybe we could call the Republican Party the FLOP – for Frivolous Lawsuits Old Party.
We’ve made the following public service announcement as a warning – watch out for those angry elephants!
A “word” alone cannot be trademarked. A trademark is usually stylized, and associated with a particular use in commerce. Republicans can’t trademark the word “republican” nor can they trademark the depiction of elephants in general. They can only protect their particular stylized version of an elephant. There are many ways around this issue, but GOP lawyers are hoping that fear of lawsuit alone will deter anyone from using anything that even resembles their trademarks. Redraw their marks so they look considerably different from the originals, and then go back on your way. I say let the GOP spend money on these dumbass lawsuits so they have less to spend on the general election.
A hog may be the better symbol for radical republicans as in “pork barrel” politics.