Last week, we posed the eternal question: are Federalist Society students trolling at maximum force or just oblivious? The occasion for the article was a FedSoc murder mystery party advertised with what looks like a faceless man standing at a lectern (more on that in a second), in front of a downward hanging American flag — State of the Union style — marked with crosshairs, with the title “Hell to the Chief.” In response, the president of Yale’s Federalist Society has provided a detailed answer. The verdict?
Apparently oblivious.
First, the storyline of the murder mystery was not that “the [P]resident is killed in some sort of coup attempt,” nor was it even remotely related to January 6th. The evening’s pretend murder victim was not the President, but rather a fictitious Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The cover image you included in your article depicts the Supreme Court’s chambers.
Squinting at this image… that is what that is!
The “tie” is the drapery and the white shirt is made of the two columns. Fair enough. More on this later too.
Second, your comments that the event constituted “intentional trolling,” “obliviousness,” or implicit advocacy of insurrection are not rooted in fact. To confirm this, you might ask your source to take a photo of the back of the cover sheet. Each was printed with a foreword where the author explained that the game’s purpose was to serve as a cautionary tale and to reinforce the importance of the rule of law and the danger of unchecked power. Saying that we lacked self-awareness contradicts the actual moral of the game.
How Filevine Bakes AI Into Every Layer Of Your Case Management
It’s like having a junior associate who’s never off the clock.
No one ever thought this chapter was implying advocacy of insurrection — the impression was that the group thought these events were a good jumping off point for a night of mirthful role-playing — either to provoke a reaction or because they failed to see how bad that would look. And topical murder mysteries aren’t bad per se, this just might be the wrong time for this one.
One of the key points of the original article was “the group’s utter failure to read the room.” Not even a year removed from national leaders of the same organization flogging a coup attempt that involved yahoos storming the Capitol with zipties and building gallows for Mike Pence as he stood in front of that same style flag, the idea that FedSoc could put together “Hell to the Chief” with this iconography and think it wouldn’t be read like this is kind of stunning.
As noted in the original article, we could only jokingly speculate about what a party about January 6 would look like, and while it’s nice to know FedSoc had a whole different plan for the event — TEN POINTS TO SLYTHERIN! — the event itself was secondary to the advertising. The eternal question posed in the article was about FedSoc making a provocative callback to political violence. That the use of these design elements was supposedly unintentional — because when someone makes a play on “Hail to the Chief” who doesn’t realize it’s really about the Chief Justice? — misses the point entirely.
While the partisan camps of characters bickered about whodunit, the guilty character was actually a fictional British diplomat with immunity.
Spoiler alert!
To secure the necessary approvals, this event was explicitly cleared through Dean Gerken’s office. She and I even spoke directly about it that same day.
To summarize: it is blatantly false that this was a “Capitol Riot/Presidential Assassination Party.” The title is wrong, and the article is void of context about the true message and form of the event.
Good point. It’s a Chief Justice Assassination Party. Changing the specific high-ranking government official involved changes the tenor entirely!
This is the “drink responsibly” in fine print at the end of a booze ad. And just as we’d roll our eyes if Bacardi said, “I can’t believe you said we’re using sex appeal and the promise of a never-ending bacchanal to sell heavy drinking… didn’t you see the ‘drink responsibly’ part?” we’re rolling our eyes at this.
In fact, the phrase “void of context” is unintentionally the most salient phrase in the whole response. Because void of context is how the fellow Yale students who tipped it to us saw it. That’s how we got to see it. And that’s how the majority of the audience got to see it. This image is the rhetorical artifact, as it were, that the group put out into the universe. Imagery and concepts within the four corners (and front side) of an ad aren’t entirely scrubbed of their impact by “oh, but there’s some fine print if people got to the point of turning it over.” Context and nuance absolutely matter, but you’ve also got to take some responsibility for the image projected in a vacuum.
A good example of this is the issue above with the picture of the Supreme Court chambers that read to me and the tipsters as “a suited man with a tie and tie clip.” Would I have seen a faceless person in this image if not for the “Hail to the Chief” reference and the State of the Union imagery… right after insurrectionists were actively talking about killing the Vice President in the House chamber? Maybe, maybe not. But that all plays into how this imagery viscerally lands.
Bringing this full circle to learning to read the room.
So, again, maybe 2021 isn’t the year for this specific organization to be running any politically inspired murder parties.
Earlier: FedSoc’s Capitol Riot/Presidential Assassination Party Plan Totally Tracks
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.