It’s been a great week for the ACLU, hasn’t it? There are a lot of things that happen in political advocacy that we know instinctively but often can’t see proven. Here is one of those, a case so egregious that even Audra Heinrichs of Jezebel was obviously appalled by it. This is what we learned from testimony by the general counsel of the ACLU in the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial:
Heard has given just $1.3 million to the organization after promising in 2016 to give $3.5 million of her divorce settlement to the organization—and her ex Elon Musk donated nearly half of that money ($500,000, to be exact). Worse yet, ACLU staffers actually ghost-wrote The Washington Post op-ed at the center of the trial, in which Heard claimed to be a survivor of domestic violence, and they pitched on her behalf, timed to the release of Heard’s then-upcoming film, Aquaman.
Email correspondence shows that Robin Shulman, a communications strategist with the ACLU, wrote the first draft of the op-ed in November 2018, a month before the article was published, while Heard’s legal team made edits to avoid obvious incrimination of Depp. Terence Dougherty, general counsel and COO of the ACLU, said the ACLU was charged with pitching the op-ed to a number of outlets and had considered the New York Times, Teen Vogue and USA Today before eventually placing it in the the Post. Another ACLU communications associate, Gerry Johnson, emailed other team members about timing the op-ed so it would be released near the premiere of Aquaman. Johnson wrote: “Since draft turned out pretty strong and Aquaman slated to do large numbers I’m wondering what you think about it?”
So, to sum this up here: Heard was a celebrity spokesperson on a political issue — “an ACLU artist ambassador on women’s rights” — but the actual speaking was words penned by a group she paid off that was using her as a front, the pitching of the article to media outlets was done by the activist group, and the whole thing was timed to coincide with the release of Heard’s latest movie. That is how the celebrity-politics sausage is made.