OT: Chiff & Fipple: Fair & Balanced

Whistle
1

Fox Loses Bid to Stop Sale of Franken Book
Fri August 22, 2003 06:31 PM ET


By Gail Appleson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday slammed Fox News’ trademark infringement lawsuit against Al Franken and his publisher Penguin Group and refused to stop the sale of the liberal satirist’s new book that pokes fun at the network and host Bill O’Reilly.

Fox charged that Franken had violated its trademarked phrase “fair and balanced” by including it on the cover of his book entitled “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.” Fox is owned by News Corp. and Penguin is a unit of Pearson . The book went on sale on Thursday.

“There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case,” said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin. “This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally.”

“Parody is a form of artistic expression protected by the First Amendment. The keystone to parody is imitation. Mr. Franken is clearly mocking Fox,” said Chin.

The judge said he thought it ironic that a media company that should be fighting to protect free speech would seek to undermine the First Amendment. He also said he thought the “fair and balanced” trademark is weak because the phrase is used so often.

Although the judge refused to grant an injunction that could have stopped further books sales, he did not end the case. Fox could choose to pursue litigation while Penguin could file a motion asking that the case be dismissed. Both sides said they are considering their options.

“We don’t care if it’s Al Franken or Al Lewis or Weird Al Yankovic. We’re here to protect our trademark and our talent,” said Paul Schur, a Fox spokesman, after the hearing.

Fox argued in its suit that the cover’s tag line, “A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,” was used to confuse consumers.

During arguments held before his ruling, Chin asked Fox lawyer Dorie Hansworth if she really believed that the cover was confusing.

“To me, it’s quite ambiguous as to what the message is,” she said. “It’s a deadly serious cover … This is much too subtle to be considered a parody.”

Floyd Abrams, a lawyer representing Penguin and Franken, strongly disagreed.

“There is no way that any person not completely dense would be confused by this cover to think that Fox was accusing O’Reilly of being a liar,” he said.

Chin, siding with Abrams, pointed out that the word “Lies” in the title is printed in large red letters next to a photo of O’Reilly. He said that there was no likelihood that book buyers would think that the sponsor is Fox or O’Reilly.

“We are talking about relatively sophisticated consumers here,” he said of those who would be buying Franken’s book.

Chin also said that there was no evidence of bad faith by Franken to mislead consumers into thinking he works for Fox.

“There is no intent by Franken to palm himself off as a Fox commentator,” he said.

Franken, who won four Emmy awards for his work on “Saturday Night Live,” is the author of four previous books, including the recent best seller, “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.”

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I get a kick, admittedly a nervous kick, out of Fox News’ apparent belief that the best way to balance perceived liberal media bias is to actively tilt the news as far as possible in the opposite direction. Some news reports, particularly on Satan’s Network (CNN) have suggested that Fox’ expensive foray into the suppression of free speech is nothing but a result of their media star (O’Reilly) being in a personal snit about Franken’s lack of respect. Sheesh! Who’s he think he is, the new Edward R. Murrow (for you younger types, he used to be a network talking head back before you were born)?

Seems like no matter what the trade, primadonnas can be expensive luxuries.

3

Franken was in the news yesterday for trying to trick Ashcroft into revealing some personal info for a fake academic (?) project, namely his next book…

An obnoxious media darling of the left, I am no fan of Al Franken and his little non-books,though he was pretty funny on SNL all those years ago. Back then, he made fun of himself at his own expense. Now, he discovered the joys of talk show appearances where people nervously titter about his stretching of the basic rules of politeness. Like I said in another thread, when someone can get away of making fun of somebody’s body size and call them an insulting name, but only if they are right of political center and of the correct ethnicity, it’s just mean.

Mean People Suck, remember? That’s what it says on all those bumperstickers.

4

I saw that thing with Franken and Ashcroft. Ashcroft caught on, but many others have gone along with Franken way to far,… much to their chagrin. It Was like Michael Moore arranging an interview with Charlton Heston in his home and then battering him like a cat with a mouse. I look forward to seeing what Franken does with this all.

But in fact - and counter-point - Weekender, I greatly admire Al Franken’s political acumen, and his ability to tie the self-enfatuated and pompous in mental knots. Like that blonde conservative phoney… what’s her name? Run her through the meat grinder. I am very relieved at the court verdict. Thanks for posting it Dale. I will be buying this book on Amazon tonight!

Franken’s Big Fat Idiot book on Limbaugh was the best revenge against a horrid, horrible man, - reading that made me feel like a million dollars, because I hated Limbaugh and his venemous mouth so bad… I wish somebody would do the same with Kenneth Starr.

And it was a crime that Franken he didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize. It truth, he deserved it. Maybe this time around it will be different.

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I didn’t think he was all that funny on SNL and I was a liberal college student at the time! When Franken and Davis would come on we would all hit the refrigerator.

Now he’s just a big mouth who thinks insults are funny.

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I am glad to see someone has a bit of sense about this stuff. This was a good ruling.Fox News (?) is so slanted .We seem to be in a climate right now where if you are not in agreement with the powers that be(right) then keep your mouth shut, thank you very much. It’s good to see this.

A bit of common sense is a breath of fresh air.

I too,l(liberal 70’s college student too- now semi-liberal granny) was never a big fan of Al Franken on SNL. It is refreshing to see someone hold their own with the pundits from the right but, while he does make points they often seem tipped with poison, mean spirited. Weekenders, you are right, Franken and Davis meant break time.

7

All this wrangle in the media and in the courts to defend to the extreem the (?) ammendment, the rights to do whatever before it’s done unto you, the seperation of most anything; is an extension of the legal profession’s desire to provide more employment for their own and to outgrow and big government. If you covered a sports playing field with attorneys and left them there for the season you would enjoy excellent turf for the following year.

Twenty one years spent traveling the globe in the “Intelligence business” taught me that all media reporting is slanted in some direction as far as the people reporting it feel they can get away with. My greatest amusements (and sorrows) have come from comparing what I had witnessed with my own four eyes to what was reported by the media the next day.

Remember if you believe SUV’s are destroying the environment; you have the right, and duty, to illegally enter the property of those selling such abominations and commit arson. The resulting fumes and residue will not damage that same envionmet because your higher power and their legal specialists said so.

Dale, you may edit this rant if you so desire. I will not consider it a violation of my rightsl Thankyou, I feel much better now.

8

I just kinda thot Bill Maher already had the base covered for witty comebacks. I haven’t ever seen Franken, or nearly any of these darlings, in any kind of meaningful back and forth with conservatives, just roundtables of me-too types or poseur-conservatives like on Maher’s show.

I am certain he is glib. But that is not news and its not brave, when you have most of the media behind you, sniggering away and cheering you on. They hate Rush Limbaugh that is for sure even though, as I said, “Mean People Suck.” Many articulate people from the left are celebrated for their rapier-like cynicism or passive-aggressive mock-Midwestern humor. Rush is pretty articulate, and very successful, which just ISN’t supposed to happen. His tone and self-congratulatory ways have never scored high in my book, but I enjoy his audio montages and gathered insights well enough.

I cannot accept the continual claim that liberal speech is being shut down in this country. Give me a break. Just because popular sentiment has changed because of 9/11 does not mean that brown shirts are coming to shut up Todd Gitlin or Noam Chomsky. People just laugh at them more now and get tired of the finger-pointing at our own culture.

And capitalists are waiting in the wings to make money on a successful leftist talk show, if they can ever find someone who can succeed.

To me, its much more of a challenge to make your political points, be entertaining, and obey rules of logic and courtesy (not attacking ad hominum) and stay away from hyperbole. Very rare. Plus, people get bored by it. Not sexy enuf.

9

I have said it before, and I will say it again, a million times if I need to:

THERE ARE JERKS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE!

As a matter of fact EVERY political party has them. Frankin is no better or worse than Limbaugh when it comes to tactics and the way he treats people. It still does not make it right just because he happens to be on your side of the fence or you agree with the targets he attacks!

10

In my opinion, for the Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Coulter (R/L/C) crowd the circle has closed and they can’t take what they love to dish out.

I’ll admit that a lot of national media figures, such as Katie Couric and that group are slanted to the left. But they’d always done so POLITELY. Beginning a decade or so ago, the right spawned a group of spokesmen, starting with the religious types like Falwell and quickly devolving to the R/L/C types who basically found that they had a national, mostly radio, audience for whatever McCarthyesque charges, half-truths, personal insults and outright lies they could spew forth, and they made the most of it. They also made beaucoup bucks doing it.

It took the other side quite a while to react, IMO because they were too inured to an idea of “be polite” or “play nice”. Truth is, the responses often seemed “whiney”. In recent times, though, the left has spawned it’s own attack dogs. And, unlike R/L/C with their pretentions to journalist or “commentator” status, the reaction group mostly started as comedians (e.g. Maher, Franken, Dennis Miller). So, often the counterattacks are at least marginally funny, making the R/L/C types look dour and mean spirited. Trouble is, they weree awful good at dishing it out. They’ve proven rather less good at taking it.

At least that’s how I see it.

11

I watched the tape of the Al Franken-Bill O’Reilly shouting fest at the Bookseller’s convention. I think Bill is a self-serving, egotistical blow-hard and I don’t think much of his politics. I think Franken is hilarious and I am politically closer to him than O’Reilly for sure. (Just for the record, I regard myself as a left-of-center moderate). Anyway, I don’t think either guy behaved well. Franken can be pretty vicious and I thought his attack on O’Reilly was unprovoked and ill-mannered. (O’Reilly responded in kind). I will say, however, that I think there is a general feeling among people to the left that there is kind of demonization of the left going on. (I’ve already expressed my opinion that I think something pretty close to the demonization of the right was occurring during the heyday of P.C.) It may be because of where I stand politically, but the current climate seems particularly brutal to me. Maybe it is unfair to cite Coulter, because I’d like to think she is too extreme to be taken seriously. But Coulter, even Sean Hannity, are increasingly willing to say that liberals “do not wish the country well” (Coulter) which is a bald-faced lie. It doesn’t qualify as an opinion. They both know better. It’s a lie.

What worries me the most is that I think there has been a nearly total breakdown of civil & rational discourse. In my own state, for example, we’re in the middle of this 10 Commandments deal. It bothers me NOT AT ALL that someone might believe, as most of the state does, that the monument belongs in the Supreme Court building. What bothers me is that most citizens who support that view seem either unwilling or unable to make their case by way of argument. You say to them “You know, this is really a separation of church & state issue” and they get red-faced and say “They’re trying to throw God out of everything!” There really is a reasonably good argument for the memorial being there…but that’s not what gets expressed.

Anyway, I continue to ramble: I listened to a few minutes of Sean Hannity yesterday and the 10 Commandments crisis was the topic. I’m listening to the callers and I’m realizing that they all believe that there is some old monument to the 10 Commandments in the Supreme Court Building that atheists sued to remove and Judge Moore is hanging on to tradition and trying to preserve this bit of history. No, no. What in fact happened is that Judge Moore was an obscure local judge. He had a crude wooden plaque on his wall with the 10 C’s. Someone objects. A controversy sets up. He gets attention. He gets more attention. He gets elected to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because of this controversy. Things die down a bit. He has this monument built and sneaks it into the building in the middle of the night without, of course, saying a word to the other justices on the Supreme Court. Predictably, and according to plan, a fresh controversy brews up and he is at the center. And, he starts using language which, to Southerners, echos George Wallace in the U. of Alabama doorway: These federal government outsiders coming to Alabama and trying to tell us what to do, etc.

There are 2 issues here and then I promise to shut up. There’s the original issue of whether or not a 10 Commandments monument in the S.C. building is a violation of church-state. In fairness to those who think not, the USA is remarkably inconsistent on this issue. The government and the court system is shot through with references to God. But then there’s the issue of a Chief Justice of a state Supreme Court ignoring the directives of federal judges AND each and every one of his fellow Alabama Supreme Court justices. He was suspended yesterday and I am hopeful he’ll ultimately be removed from office.

End of rant. Hello to any of you who made it this far.

Dale

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Good point about the inconsistancies. I’m somewhat amazed to the references to religion in all of Bush’s speeches. Just the fact of seperation? It doesn’t exist. I don’t like the homoginization of American Society. It’s a forced lid on a pressure cooker. One day it will blow! I envision a situation like the Israelis/Palistinean’s in America. But on a much more complex scale./

I’ll also say that I dislike Franken/ Michael Moore et al… on a personal level, but I read them because it is an entertaining way to get a finger on the pulse. Much better than reading the National Review.

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What’s kind of interesting to me about all this is that so-called
intellectuals could be so scared, insulted, offended, or apparently
principled against any kind of morals beyond their own, observable in
publically owned public places.

I think one could safely assume that if some “seperationist” (between
church and state) came up with the bold idea of placing a nude statue in
front of courts buildings that said, “Tell The Truth,” everyone would think
it was marvelous as long as no reference was given to the origins of such
a concept.

I’m not religious at all, but I could have a little fun with this one. The 10
Commandments don’t bother me at all, niether do any other creeds. I
don’t give much credance to any of them other than that they may contain
some good human concepts.

Perhaps this is too liberal for some, but what I propose, to expose the
plastic in some of these “holier than thous” (on both sides), is to carefully
remove the current statue ( oh god, please don’t remove any of the state
statutes :smiley: ), and don’t break any of the commandments while removing
this gallery of old English :smiley: , and replace it with an iron scupture which
says the basic same thing, paraphrased, but which doesn’t have the two
arched tablets design, and let it say something like this:

The Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent
Philosophers, 1.60):

  1. Trust good character more than promises.
  2. Do not speak falsely.
  3. Do good things.
  4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
  5. Learn to obey before you command.
  6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
  7. Make reason your supreme commander.
  8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
  9. Honor the gods.
  10. Have regard for your parents.

Solon the Athenian: Solon was born around 638 B.C.E., and lived until
approximately 558, He was elected to create a constitution for Athens,
594 B.C.E.

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You have no idea how funny this discussion looks to someone who has never heard of any of the princpal people being discussed. :laughing:

BTW, I wonder what advice Solon had for people who discover that their parents do bad things.

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These “commandments” wouldn’t make it past the first day.

“Don’t associate with people who do bad things.”

  1. What are “bad things?”
  2. Who’s the judge of what is bad? Maybe what you think is bad isn’t what I think is bad.
  3. If you disassociate yourself from people who do “bad things,” aren’t you being judgmental?
  4. The word “bad” has a negative connotation and shouldn’t be used.

So…you’d have to take this one out…and that’s just a start. This is the American way. :slight_smile:
Susan

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We do indeed need an emoticon with “tongue in cheek.” :smiley:

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Yes, we do. :wink:

18

Regarding the O’Reilly/Franken Case:

If I were O’Reilly, I would just laugh it off and consider the source. Al Franken has made a career of parody. Comedic parody is when you imitate someone in order to make fun of or mock the person’s beliefs or positions. As a lefty, Franken picks popular righties to whack at with his semi-humorous/semi-serious rantings. He makes good money at it and has a following on the left who howl at his stuff.

True, it’s mostly the liberals who get enraged at this stuff and file lawsuits over it. In this case, O’Reilly’s, hot Irish temper may have gotten the best of him. Being made fun of may have gotten under his skin. On the other hand, O’Reilly may just want to give Franken a little grief and make him pay a price as a little return gift for Franken maing money at his expense. They are both big boys, even though they sometimes act like little kids.

Regarding the Alabama State Courthouse Ten Commandments Monument:

I believe Roy Moore is sincere, sincere enough to get suspended from a judicial position. A suspension on your record does not bode well for landing higher judicial appointments. Moore’s position is more in line with American judicial tradition, belief and practice than his contemporary counterparts.

As a point of reference, America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution, plus all fifty state constitutions give acknowledgement to God and identify Him as the source of our true freedoms. If the higher, royal law of God were not recognized as ruling supreme, the alternative would be rule by a state or king/president regime. I’ll trust the unchanging benevolence of God over the ever-changing whims of self-centered humans everytime. This firm conviction in divine justice and a divine, moral rule of law has done more liberate, protect and defend people’s rights than anything else. Athiests, and church and state-seperatists have even benefited immensely from these.

“In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” The Ten Commandments. These are very, very good things, even for those who may not appreciate their real value. Avid church and state-seperatists should appreciate the untold benefits these affirmations and commandments have given to our society and themselves and bend on the issue.

19

O’Reilly’s an idiot, Franken is a comedic wizard ( to me, a subdued George Carlin), and Maher is out in left field without a glove, a hat, or the slightest clue. Just my $.02.

~Larry

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Let me say this on behalf of a man I respect.
Ken Starr was chosen as independent counsel
by Janet Reno, Clinton’s fiercely protective
attorney general, for
several reasons. He was a moderate Republican,
a Federal judge, who was widely respected for
fairness by both political parties,
and he was vocally opposed to the independent counsel
law. He served reluctantly, out
of a sense of duty. He investigated only those charges that
Reno told him had sufficient evidence to warrant
investigating. When he was painted as a
right wing sexually obsessed puritan,out to
destroy Clinton, Starr
made the fatal mistake of not attacking back (not
believing a president would try to demonize
a Federal judge or that this stuff would be
believed), for which he later apologized to his staff.
After the impeachment, Starr returned to
working for the repeal of the independent counsel law,
testifying before Congress that it
is an unconstitutional division of
the power of the Executive branch.

If the Fox suit is as it’s represented in
the article, the judge is right that it’s without
merit. Best