Chapter Two Corporations Are Not People—and They Make Lousy Parents

If the tobacco companies really stopped marketing to children, the tobacco companies would be out of business in 25 to 30 years because they will not have enough customers to stay in business.

—Bennett Lebow, cigarette corporation CEO

“F#*k you.” That (without the sanitizing symbols) is what Bad Frog Brewery, Inc., a corporation chartered under Michigan law, demanded the constitutional right to have on its labels. In the mid-1990s, the corporation wanted to market its beer with a foul-mouthed frog who, as the label said, “he just don’t care.” The corporation offered a mascot on the label, a large cartoon frog elevating its middle finger. Because New York law prohibits alcohol labels that are “obscene or indecent” and “obnoxious or offensive to the commonly and generally accepted standard,” the state liquor authority refused to approve the label for sale in New York. The corporation balked at complying with the law and filed a lawsuit against the New York State Liquor Authority and the people who served on it.

At first, Bad Frog insisted that the up-yours gesture was a “symbol of peace, solidarity, and goodwill.” After taking the case to the federal appeals court in New York, the corporation admitted that its beer label conveyed, “among other things, the message ‘f#*! you.’” (The court decision helpfully explains that this was “presumably a suggestion of having intercourse with yourself.”) Noting the “serious issues” in the case, the court ruled in Bad Frog’s favor and voided the New York law, leaving the people powerless to stop corporations from spewing vulgarities from beer shelves across the land.

OK, it’s not the most serious case in the world. Maybe most people don’t really care if lewd beer labels fill the shelves, although the people of New York cared enough to have a law preserving some decency in the beer aisle. Still, the case of the finger-waving frog reflects the hallmarks of the new corporate rights era: the shameless (“honest, the finger means peace, solidarity, and goodwill”), the irresponsible (“he just don’t care,” placed beside the health warning label), and the display of power over the people (“we will do whatever sells, and your law can’t stop us”). These themes now run through far more serious areas of our national, community, and family life than beer labels.