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Hi everyone! Recently, Stef mentioned Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes in <i>The Truth About Ted Cruz</i> saying that she'd portrayed "Organ Grinder" Cruz's young daughters as little monkey stage props in his campaign. <i>“There is an unspoken rule in editorial cartooning that a politician’s children are off-limits,” Telnaes admits. “People don’t get to choose their family members so obviously it’s unfair to ridicule kids for their parent’s behavior while in office or on the campaign trail- besides, they’re children. There are plenty of adults in the political world who act childish, so there is no need for an editorial cartoonist to target actual children.”</i> http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/12/22/ted-cruz-strikes-back-at-washington-post-cartoonist-for-mocking-his-daughters-theyre-out-of-your-league/ I'm an amateur political cartoonist, I'm wanting to create a Twitter feed for my work, and I'm wondering about any ethical limits lambasting the criminal political class and other public figures in the Internet Age. Is there such a thing as slander/libel under UPB? So, for example, there is a little known story about Marco Rubio’s 1990 arrest for underage drinking Miami Park (after hours) well-known to be a place for older gay men to cruise for gay prostitutes (Rubio would have been 18 at the time). https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rubios-summer-of-90-an-arrest-then-newfound-purpose/2016/01/21/3582a72e-c04d-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html It turns out, one of the two friends Rubio was arrested with was allegedly sued by the City of Miami in 2007 for running a gay porn studio out of a rental property he owned. Rubio and this friend (Angel Barrios) were cash-strapped roommates in 1990. This doesn’t prove anything, of course, and the police report doesn’t mention any illegal activity. http://www.miamigov.com/cityattorney/docs/litigation/Litigation-Report-Dec-2011.pdf (page 16, bottom) Now then, political cartoons of the past appearing in newspapers had to conform to the editor/publishers standards. But in the Internet Age, information can be exchanged without editorial filters (setting aside for a moment Twitter’s [and other social media’s] community standards for a moment). Would it violate UPB to post a cartoon caricaturing Rubio as a gay prostitute based on these rumors? I’m just wondering about the ethics. What if the portrayal in a state of nudity or state of undress, possibly performing sex-acts? How about portrayal of pornography, drug use, sexuality/sex acts, racism, etc. where there is little or no factual basis…(None of these things violate UPB insofar as I’m aware, but if used to trash a public figure’s reputation — would there be an ethical conflict?). I’m not really concerned with aesthetics here, either, just the ethical dimension. Is there such a thing as slander/libel under UPB?