Lawyers presumably Christian who do not turn the other cheek

A judge has fined El Jueves 6,000 euros for naming the president of the Abogados Cristianos foundation "Idiot of the Year". She states that freedom of expression does not cover insult. This is not a ruling that makes me happy, because El Jueves accompanied me for years and years, when "idiot" was not even a monthly or annual designation, but weekly. And nothing happened, because the word was used in the most popular register. In the end, nobody likes being called names, but within the framework of a satirical magazine, a certain broadness of mind is understood. Or a little flexibility on the part of the alleged offended party. I remember at the beginning of starting this column, cough, cough, that the good people at Alerta Digital felt offended by a "Stop the presses" and dedicated the infamous article titled "The little shit of Mr. Gutiérrez" to me, which had the merit of having been written – according to their own confession – by reading only the lines that non-subscribers were allowed to sample. It was so over the top that, frankly, it made me burst out laughing, and it never occurred to me to consider taking legal action because my most esteemed surname had been splashed with brownish tones.

However, in this era of tension, polarization, and harassment, perhaps it is necessary to set more limits on amplified insult. Some defend it by arguing verbal and pyrotechnic wit. I, who consume industrial quantities of humor, find it cheap material, only acceptable in very specific contexts and cases. There are more ingenious ways to highlight the hypocritical rottenness of agents like Abogados Cristianos without stepping on the specific mines of insult. That said, the first thing I will do when the column is published is to go and buy El Jueves, to reconnect with it and do my part. Hopefully, there will be a small Streisand effect that will serve as a lesson to these lawyers who instrumentalize justice in favor of regrettable retrograde interests.