Not that they're doing even close to a good job of that right now.
Calling the guy a goat fucker? In the US, with the PC sensitivity, you can go to jail for far less...
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/05/23/a-methuen...
http://www.businessinsider.com/teen-justin-carter-faces-tria...
http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/15763074-story
http://www.wdrb.com/story/30881928/judge-olu-stevens-gives-m...
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/man-wins-35000-arrested-cal...
One guy spent an extra 2 months in prison. What else could be meant by "go to jail"??
Because we allow judges to hand down sentences in order to maintain the decorum of the courtroom.
> It shows in the United States there are people that can arbitrarily add months to your jail sentence for insulting them, or simply send you to jail if you happen to do it while being in the same room they're in.
Not specific people, specific officers of the court who are performing the duties which pertain to being such. You could insult a judge outside of a courtroom all you want and they wouldn't be able to do any more about it than any other private person. Even less, actually, given that the judge is a "public official" under the law and, therefore, the Sullivan "actual malice" standard applies, which makes it substantially more difficult for someone to prove defamation.
OTOH, there's an established body of precedent in the U.S. (which fortunately, not too long ago, wasn't anywhere near as PC as it is now -- far from it, in fact) saying that politicians and big enough celebrities are fair game for non-specific, purely pejorative insults (like "goat fucker"), as long as they don't stray into the territory of making a specific claim of fact (e.g. "I saw the Senator drilling a away at a captive goat behind the shed the other day, and boy, you should have seen the look on his face!")
In the final link, the speaker was even awarded damages for unjust arrest.
Perhaps we may (regrettably) go down that road someday and perhaps there are instances of police overstepping their bounds to regulate "proper" speech, but I'd be willing to bet* my next pay check that being arrested for calling somebody a goat fucker would not hold up in court.
* - OK, not my whole check but like $5
If you called a judge a "goat fucker" in their court room, I suspect you would be in some hot water.
One could argue there's not a huge leap between rules/laws requiring respectful behavior towards judges in a court room and a law requiring respectful behavior towards world leaders...
Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted -- I'm not defending the German law, just pointing out that it's not that different from contempt-of-court punishments in the US.
Now, in an unfortunate turn of events should Cruz become POTUS I don't know if such a statement would be seen differently because I'd believe that he does do that.
Here's a girl in the United States who had a judge raise her bail just because she said "adios" instead of "bye", and then put her in jail for a month for saying "fuck you": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rrRGhvpEjo
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3464628/Woman-35-fac....
This is the closest to this. Except that she posted a phone number which caused the victim to be harassed by a whole lot of other people. She wasn't arrested for calling her names, she was arrested and possibly charged because of this fact alone.
> http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/05/23/a-methuen....
> http://www.businessinsider.com/teen-justin-carter-faces-tria....
> http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/15763074-story
> http://www.wdrb.com/story/30881928/judge-olu-stevens-gives-m....
> http://thefreethoughtproject.com/man-wins-35000-arrested-cal....
All of these others appear to be threatening messages, which, while somewhat controversial, are different animals than a simple name calling/satire post. Some would say it'd be negligent not to investigate and/or charge them with this if said action threatened actually came about.
The other is a comment made to a judge. They were arrested for contempt of court. This is entirely different, because only judges get to make this call in the US. Lots of people probably say similar statements on Facebook about POTUS, I've seen people say it without coming out and saying it but they weren't afraid of the law in this case.
The last case was acquitted, shown to NOT be legally arrested. Kind of disproves your claim, or at least offers contrary evidence.
There is a very important context to the 'he called him a goat fucker': The - admittedly very crude - 'poem' he made is embedded in the context of basically explaining what the German law is about, and what you can not say.
There is also another part of history: Erdogan complained about another, earlier satire show on German TV. Boehmermann was referencing this and the earlier attempts of censorship by Erdogan, and basically said 'look, we could call you this, but we didn't, we just clearly expressed our opinions and this is our freedom of expression here in Germany'.
PC sensitivity has nothing to do with legal rights. This is the country that allows protesting soldier's funerals with "god hates faggots"—one of the least pc actions I've ever witnessed—and only restricts the distance at which the protest can take place.
Also, Obama and Erdogan both fuck goats all day long. This might land me in jail in Turkey, but I'm gonna guess most people reading this post (including Obama, if he didn't have better things to do) would roll their eyes and move on.
There are libel laws that might provide some limited personal protection, but this would be civil court and not criminal court.
PC bullies are nothing more than just that. impotent bullies. they have no power and have no law behind them.
if I want to call someone a goat fucker, be it leader of a country or the guy next door, I can do so without fear of prosecution.