Fox News, Al Franken engage in legal fracas
To the long list of stories you can’t make up, we can add the one about Fox News suing Al Franken over his use of the phrase “fair and balanced.”
By provoking this hilariously ironic legal snit, Franken, the satirist, has achieved full warrior status in the pitched battle between the forces of cartoon righteousness and the decimated remnants of sanity. The latter are in an Alamo-like defensive position at the moment, surrounded by cutthroat opportunists and firing in every direction. Franken happens to be the depleted tribe’s best sharpshooter.
He has a new book coming out, you see. He scored a few years ago with “Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot.” The charge explicit in that title has never been fully refuted, even though Limbaugh has since lost something like 400 pounds.
The new book is called “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” It is to be released next month. The cover features a picture of Franken, arms crossed, standing before a bank of monitors on which the faces of various undermedicated “conservative” spinmeisters are plain to see.
Unlike “Treason,” “Slander,” “Bias” and other foaming-at-the-mouth attack jobs, Franken’s book is supposed to be intentionally funny. Use of the phrase “fair and balanced” is, you see, a play on words. A joke. A matter of humor, as it used to be known, before every aspect of partisanship became a grim, vicious process of slander and gizzard-ripping.
Sadly, humor of any self-deprecating kind is alien to the suits and circus performers at Rupert Murdoch’s “news” empire.
In taking Franken to court, Fox lawyers argued that “Franken is neither a journalist nor a television news personality. He is not a well-respected voice in American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable. His views lack any serious depth or insight.”
This, I remind you, is from the people who employ Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and give Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter more air time than most non-Republicans. Strictly speaking, can any of the Fox News “team” be considered any more a “journalist” or “news personality” (emphasis on the “news”) than Franken, who I don’t believe has ever said he was either?
More to the point … “shrill,” “unstable” and lacking in “serious depth” … hello!?
Have Fox’s lawyers ever watched their own channel? It’s essentially programmed by and for the shrill, unstable and depthless. If Roger Ailes, Fox News’ svengali, ran the place with any concern for journalism and none for shrill, unstable hype, spin and marketing, CNN would be eating his lunch, instead of vice versa.
Anyway, Fox also accused Franken of being “a parasite,” apparently for making visual reference to Fox News personalities on the cover and by placing O’Reilly’s picture immediately beneath the word “Lies” (an entirely unintentional gaffe by the Dutton Publishing graphics department, I’m sure). Oh, yeah, and Fox also accused Franken of verbally attacking O’Reilly and other of Fox News’ shrill, depth-free news personalities on two different occasions, the poor, poor, defenseless things.
Conjecture by Fox legal says Franken was “either intoxicated or deranged” at a D.C. dinner in April. I haven’t read the entire filing, but I’ll be surprised if Fox doesn’t say something about Franken’s already legendary confrontation with O’Reilly at an author’s panel on media bias at the Book Expo in L.A. in May. By all accounts, Franken feasted on O’Reilly Gizzard Tartare for lunch that day.
Obviously, Franken couldn’t buy this kind of publicity. But the sight of Fox News, a plump, consensual parasite on the rump of the Republican National Committee, accusing anyone else of being “deranged,” “intoxicated,” “shrill” and “unstable” is like Saddam Hussein filing for a restraining order against U.S. Special Ops.
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Brian Lambert can be reached at blambertpioneerpress.com or at 651-228-5424.
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AP-NY-08-13-03 1150EDT
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