to an audience sympathetic to pornography, and that the “Asshole of the Month” column is an especially frequent vehicle for Hustler’s lampooning of its critics, all will telegraph to a reader that the article presents opinions, not allegations of fact. See Ault, at 881; Fudge v. Penthouse Int’l, Ltd., 840 F.2d 1012, 1017 (1st Cir.1988), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 65, 102 L.Ed.2d 42. Furthermore, the context of the article makes clear that its content is opinion. Even apparent facts must be allowed as opinion “when the surrounding circumstances of a statement are those of a heated political debate, where certain remarks are necessarily understood as ridicule or vituperation, or both, but not as descriptive of factual matters.” Koch v. Goldway, 817 F.2d 507, 509 (9th Cir.1987) (<HOLDING>). As we concluded in Ault, whether Hustler’s
recognizing that a defendants right to be heard in criminal proceedings prior to sentencing is constitutionally protected holding may ors query whether her political opponent was a nazi war criminal bearing the same name to be constitutionally protected opinion holding that fathers military service alone was neither political opinion nor sufficient to establish imputed political opinion holding that opposition to a gangs criminal activity is not a protected political opinion holding that imputed political opinion is a protected ground