Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Konopacki Case, continued

The Dane County District Attorney is seriously considering filing charges against Madison editorial cartoonist Mike Konopacki. I relayed the story on Tuesday: Konopacki sent a fake press release (at right) purportedly from State Assemblyman Steve Nass to the editorial page editor of the Capital Times, satirizing the Whitewater Republican's having forced the University of Wisconsin to cancel an exhibit of pro-labor posters from this past year's state protests.

Konopacki tells the Wisconsin State Journal that he has been suspended from the Cap Times for six weeks (he has free-lanced for them since the 1970's). Potentially more significantly, he could face up to 3½ years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of the Class I felony of impersonating a public official.

Unintimidated, Konopacki has struck again, but has at least learned to make it a bit more obvious that this follow-up press release is not the real McCoy:

2 comments:

  1. I don't always (or usually) agree with Mike's toons, but this attack on him is ridiculous. If anybody should be in trouble, it should be the idiots at the Cap Times who ran with the fake press release without an once of fact checking.

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  2. I can't imagine that Mike actually intended the first faux release for publication -- I imagine that the idea was just too wordy and complicated for his cartooning style. Did Nichols not know where it had come from? His first instinct should have been to call Mike up to ask "Where did you get this?"

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