In what can only mean devastating news for the Slogan Over Substance industry, lawyers for the words "Fair" and "Balanced" have requested a cease and desist order against Fox News Sunday.
"My clients have sat quietly letting their names - and definitions - be degraded by Fox News," said attorney Merriam Webster. "But after Sunday's Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, I received a call from Balance asking that we take legal action." Fair has been hospitalized after the past two week's pernicious assaults from Bill O'Reilly's "DailyKos is Satan" mugging.
"Calling Fox News Sunday panel of Wallace, Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Fred Barnes, Mort Kondrake, the 'kinda seems middle of the road until she opens her mouth' Mara Liasson (or obligatory female fill-in), fair and balanced because of the inclusion of Fox News liberal, Juan Williams, is just plain wrong. And in our view, criminally indictable.
"This week, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace went Dick Cheney all over the Fox News Sunday set, describing the "We Can Win In Iraq" columnists, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon as from the 'liberal-leaning' Brookings Institute, who wrote an op-ed that appeared in the liberal-leaning New York Times, never mentioning that they themselves were administration cheerleaders from the Iraq war get-go."
Webster also represents "Liberal" and "Leaning," who are also considering legal action against Fox and talk radio as a whole.
Webster said his clients were humiliated when Wallace asked his panel what they thought of Democrats pinning the Minneapolis bridge failure on President Bush and his Iraq incursion? The panel found it "astonishing," "unseemly" and blatant "opportunism." Webster represented all three in a civil suit against Dennis Miller's conversion from clever comic to O'Reilly's David Cohn.
"Astonishing? Unseemly? Opportunism?" asked Webster. "Perhaps the panel was speaking about White House, press secretary Tony Snow blaming Minnesota for the tragedy when he said, 'If an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions,' or the Federal Transportation Commission's 2005 report that found 'structural deficiencies' on the bridge or that the Transportation Department's inspector general criticized its own oversight of interstate bridges.
"Or perhaps when Wallace asked the question about Democrats playing the blame game, he inadvertently left out 'and Republicans like John McCain' who said, 'You could make an argument that part of the responsibility lies with the Congress of the United States...maybe if we'd have done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges, and other bridges'."
"No matter what the reason," said Webster, "we have petitioned for a restraining order maintaining Fox News, programs and personal to stay at least 1000 yards from my clients, which should be easy for Fox to gauge as it is about the same distance Fox keeps from the truth."
Developing.
Steve Young is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" www.greatfailure.com and his weekly Sunday column appears to the left of Bill O'Reilly's every Sunday in the L.A. Daily News.
www.greatfailure.com
A talk show host, author, columnist,award-winning television writer and filmmaker, his inspiring book, "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (Tallfellow Press) has been published internationally and has become required reading in the Wharton School of Business Masters Program. His "All The News That's Fit To Spoof " column appears every Sunday on the L.A. Daily News Oped Page.
Steve has appeared all over national TV and radio with his unique brand of satirical punditry and social observations appearing in national periodicals from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, to his own weekly Internet column "The Lords Of Loud," at AlbionMonitor.net and The Huffington Post.
If you're waiting for huge belly lauhgs from these pathetic pieces of satire, it's going to be a long, long wait. I don't smoke dope, so I don't just giggle at anything. It has to be genuinely funny, and there's no microscopic traces of humor here.
by
Scott (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 586 comments)
on Monday, August 6, 2007 at 9:56:05 AM
Stapstick, which isn't the least bit funny, is rumored to be knee-slapping funny.
Satire is amusing funny. Humor that make you think. Not to be confused with sarcasm, satire takes the obvious, turns it on its head, twists it and torks it until all the humor is wrung out of it.
With that in mind, maybe the humor will be crystal clear. It was pretty funny...in an ironic way, just as it was meant to be.
by
Sandy Sand (175 articles, 0 quicklinks, 223 diaries, 1503 comments)
on Monday, August 6, 2007 at 5:23:12 PM
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