If hell has a waiting room, it must be something like Room 636, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. The benches are harder than pews in a pilgrim church, crowded with fidgeting, nervous men and women - mostly lawyers - sweating out their chance to stand up, throw their best pitch and face judgment.
Even lowly traffic court can be an ordeal. You could get lasered doing 52 in a 35 zone, get the wise idea that you might get lucky if the cop has a day off and the judge lets you wriggle off the hook - and next thing you know, you're in court some morning, sandwiched between a check bouncer and a wife-beater who is getting fitted for adjustable steel bracelets, while the judge offers to double your $80 fine for wasting her court time with a ticky-tacky speeding ticket. It could happen. Take my word for it.
So imagine how Chuck Gentile felt the day he was summoned to Room 636, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse, downtown Cincinnati. By the time his case reached this stuffy cul-de-sac on the tangled justice road map, the Cleveland photographer was pretty much tapped out - worn down like a used-up eraser by one of the nation's biggest law firms.
Mr. Gentile was there because he took a picture of one of Ohio's most popular new landmarks, the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and sold it as a poster.
Imagine an erector-set pyramid on the shore of Lake Erie, against a purple sky and red-orange sun, and you get the picture. Except that you can't get that picture anymore. The Rock Hall of Fame had its own poster to peddle, so it hauled Mr. Gentile into court, where a judge ordered his posters seized and destroyed.
The judge said Mr. Gentile's picture was commercial speech, with no First Amendment protection. So Mr. Gentile appealed.
Last month, his lawyer, J. Michael Murray, told three appeals court justices that the case involved ''important issues of freedom of artistic expression.'' He said destruction of the posters violated Mr. Gentile's First Amendment rights:
''What he did was what artists and photographers have done from time immemorial. He took a photo and offered it as a work of art.''
The lawyer for the Rock Hall of Fame argued that the museum had to protect its unique shape from trademark infringement, just like McDonald's Golden Arches, or people might be deceived into thinking Mr. Gentile's posters were authorized by the Rock Hall of Fame.
At least I think that was his argument. It was a little hard to follow once the people in black robes started asking questions about place mats, T-shirts, coffee mugs and ashtrays. By the time they wandered down a dead-end discourse on the marketing methods of the Detroit Red Wings, they had left me in the dust.
Finally, one justice harrumphed, ''I think this case is a lot harder than I did at first.''
No doubt. It was getting more complicated with every question. That's their specialty.
Guy stands on a public sidewalk and takes a picture of a public building - built with help from Ohio taxpayers - and gets sued for selling posters that make it look beautiful.
That's not so complicated. It shouldn't require a detour to a hockey game or speculation about various Ohio landmarks that would be suitable for a place-mat collection.
It seems pretty simple. If Mr. Gentile was trying to deceive the public, he would not have signed his own name on the posters.
Forcing him to destroy them cost him ''lots of money.'' And as his lawyer said, ''Prior restraint of pure artistic expression runs afoul of the First Amendment.''
This case is not so hard.
The Rock Hall of Fame and Museum is in business to exploit the ultimate symbol of free expression: rock 'n' roll. The same people who charge graying boomers $14.95 to gape at Janis Joplin's whiskey bottles and Jimi Hendrix's reefer roaches are snuffing Mr. Gentile's freedom of expression like Nixon at Kent State.
For an almighty buck.
The people running the Rock Hall of Fame may have collected the plastic relics and tape-recorded echoes of a bygone era, but they don't have a clue what it was about. The lyrics to all those songs they play, about love and freedom and ''power to the people,'' might as well be a dead language.
The Appeals Court justices are expected to rule on the case ''whenever,'' which is a legal term for ''eventually.''
They should find the Rock Hall of Fame guilty of aggravated hypocrisy, award court costs and lots of money to Mr. Gentile, and sentence the Rock Hall directors to a half-day in Cincinnati traffic court.
It's not exactly the waiting room for hell. But you can see it from there.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. Call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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