Glenn Beck hires lawyers to silence critics

[kingbill]

http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/

Hugely popular conservative talker Glenn Beck has sicced his lawyers on a satirical website that's been up for a week, but the attorneys may have a point on this one.

The site, called glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, toes the line on defamation—and may have stepped across it.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...in-name-be-defamation-glenn-beck-says-yes.ars

When someone registers a domain like glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, they probably expect to hear from Glenn Beck's lawyers. In this case, it took two days. The site's anonymous operator tells Ars that the whole thing is satire—but that may not be enough to avoid charges of defamation.

Gilbert Gottfried, what have you started?
The controversy started a week ago in the Fark forums, where someone picked up on an old Gilbert Gottfried roast of the "comedian" (scare quotes fully intended) Bob Saget. During the roast, Gottfried repeatedly said (watch the video) that Saget had "not raped and killed a girl in 1990." The Fark forums took the joke about the power of insinuation and applied it to right-wing talk show host Glenn "Obama is a racist" Beck.

One of the Fark readers then took the forum meme to the next level, registering a domain name and launching a web site in order to make a point about talking head TV demagoguery. "Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations?" asks the site. "We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990—in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?" At the very bottom of the page was a small text disclaimer saying that the site was satirical.

I spoke to the anonymous owner of the site, who tells Ars that launching it "just felt right"—it flipped the "birther" non-falsifiable conspiracy theories about Obama's birth and citizenship around and applied the same tactics to one of the biggest talking heads (no pun intended?) on cable news. It's just "using Beck's tactics against him" and is a small way of "directing all this frustration" with Beck and others into action.

Glenn Call off the Lawyers these guys are just asking bold questions

 

[barman]

What a dumb response by Beck.

He might score a legal injuction against the current URL, but that will just open the door for a bevy of other domains being created which use less definitive language that cannot be legally restrained.

 

[SmallDaddy]

WHat is he hiding by lawyering up???

 

[Willie99]

I guess we have a different definition for "critics"

you see, saying glen raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 makes you an "asshole".

burden of proof fallacy
1) you can almost always can prove a positive. show us something occurred

2) you can almost never prove a negative. prove something didn't happen

Of course anyone that actually believes that Barry, Harry & Nancy can save the world, is simply not going to understand the difference anyway.

 

[kingbill]

I guess we have a different definition for "critics"

you see, saying glen raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 makes you an "asshole".

burden of proof fallacy
1) you can almost always can prove a positive. show us something occurred

2) you can almost never prove a negative. prove something didn't happen

Of course anyone that actually believes that Barry, Harry & Nancy can save the world, is simply not going to understand the difference anyway.

He's just asking bold questions...he never said he did rape and murder a young girl in 1990 but Glenn Beck has never denied he did.

It's spoof, it's satire, the guy is using Glenn Becks own techniques of "asking Questions"

 

[Willie99]

He's just asking bold questions...he never said he did rape and murder a young girl in 1990 but Glenn Beck has never denied he did.

It's spoof, it's satire, the guy is using Glenn Becks own techniques of "asking Questions"

I understand that, but it's still committing the argumentative fallacy I cited above, while many people actually believe it's a valid comparison.

 

[barman]

Well yeah...That's an implicit risk that comes with any form of parody or satire. That some people just won't get it and will instead - for better or worse - take it as being a serious submission of fact(s).

We who enjoy parody and satire nonetheless do our best to muddle onward.

 

[barman]

I personally think that the cited parody is a very weak effort...so far.

There's plenty of room for creative types to get a solid Glenn Beck parody site going, given he's got a pretty established track record of both radio and television and he's sufficiently famous that one could likely get some good mileage out of spoofing his public image

Best way is to follow the model laid out by the cats who did http://whitehouse.georgewbush.org/index.asp.....which for six years ran under simply whitehouse.org

It survived all legal challenges and there's some pretty savage parody of all aspects of BushCo going back over six years

 

[kingbill]

I understand that, but it's still committing the argumentative fallacy I cited above, while many people actually believe it's a valid comparison.

Just like Beck Does on most of his programs...

 

[Willie99]

Just like Beck Does on most of his programs...

like when he shows unedited video or talks about very real unrecorded liabilities of federal programs?

 

[kingbill]

like when he shows unedited video or talks about very real unrecorded liabilities of federal programs?

No more like when he misspells words to prove a point