Does this qualify as “news”? It certainly does for the Protection Racket Media, which either ignores or cheers satire of disfavored entities as “brave.” When it comes to its favorite protected class — Democrats — it’s another matter. NBC News assigned two reporters to get the scoop on how Elon Musk retweets a parody account “mocking” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

We’ve come a long way since that Campari ad in Hustler targeting Jerry Falwell and the media’s lionization of Larry Flynt as a free-speech advocate, eh? Via Twitchy:

A verified Twitter account mocking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has skyrocketed in followers and engagement over the last two days, with some help from Elon Musk. Twitter appeared to reinstate the once-banned account in May, with Musk soon interacting with it and boosting its following.

Twitter has promoted the parody account in other ways, too, including ranking it first in search results for “AOC,” above Ocasio-Cortez’s official account.

Oh noes! Elon Musk is having fun with a parody account! STOP. THE. PRESSES.

Of course, this wouldn’t have been a story at all if it weren’t for AOC herself exploring the outer reaches of the Streisand Effect:

On Tuesday, the account garnered wide attention on the platform after the real Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility. It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread. I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.”

“Be careful of what you see”? That’s an interesting warning, because the account in question isn’t exactly hiding its intent. Here’s a screen shot of its profile:

This is not an account that’s attempting to hijack AOC’s identity on Twitter. Just as it did before getting “permanently” blocked by previous Twitter ownership, the AOCPress account explicitly identifies itself as parody in both its display name and in it profile. The previous ownership took a dim view of satire, even when disclosed to this extent. Musk clearly doesn’t feel the need to white-knight for AOC.

NBC News feels differently, apparently. It takes two reporters to cover the AOC Is Being Mocked story, complete with conspiratorial insinuations about Twitter’s owner for … having fun. The coverage suggests something nefarious about poking fun at politicians after a couple of centuries or more of newspapers and other media outlets running editorial cartoons that routinely do the same.

In the end, we’re left asking the question: what news value does this story and report have? Other than the need to somehow delegitimize criticism and ridicule of one of America’s most self-important buffoons, it has none at all. That’s why I now call it the Protection Racket Media.

However, that goes beyond NBC News, and even beyond news media. Twenty-seven years ago, Hollywood lionized Hustler’s publisher in the Milos Forman film The People Vs Larry Flynt, specifically in reference to that Campari ad that satirized Falwell, a major political and cultural figure at the time. To refresh memories, the phony ad (which played off Campari’s double-entendre “my first time” ad campaign) had Falwell claiming that he’d had sex with his mother in an outhouse. It didn’t have the word “parody” anywhere in it, although given the source, that was painfully obvious — a point that ended up playing against Falwell in court.

At the time, the need to protect this kind of parody became a cause celebre among media outlets and activist organizations. As I recall, many media outlets filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court, although I was only able to find one of the court’s certs admitting a handful of them from June 26, 1987. (Anything before 1995 is difficult to research.) Even in this one order, the following entities were granted cert to file briefs supporting Flynt and Hustler:

• Law and Humanities Institute
• Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts
• Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press
• ACLU Foundation
• Richmond Newspapers
• American Editorial Cartoonists
• Association of American Publishers
• HBO

Seems like the media thought parody was an important principle to protect. What changed? Nothing … except the target. As long as parodies attacked the Right, the media and the legal industry protected and championed them (and correctly so). The Left’s grip on media outlets made them the gatekeepers to ensure that political parodies ran mainly in one direction. That changed with the advent of the Internet, and then the blogosphere, and finally with social media — at least until the the Left managed to exert control over those platforms.

But when Elon Musk bought Twitter and restored parody accounts such as this one, suddenly that calculation no longer holds. The thin-skinned Left and its Protection Racket Media wants to choke off any ridicule of its allies, which is why we got a two-reporter investigation of a Twitter account. When a self-important progressive congresswoman from Brooklyn finds herself the target of some clearly labeled satire, that needs to be suppressed! Or at the very least investigated, and the effort painted as sinister and illegitimate.

Don’t be fooled. The effort to quash the AOCPress account isn’t about principle — it’s about power. And this NBC News report is nothing more than a butthurt lament that they can’t do more to protect AOC than this.