Glenn Beck loses ‘raped and murdered’ arbitration – thresq.com — Having proved his point, Eiland-Hall handed the domain back to Beck. The WIPO decision here.
Fox News’ Glenn Beck has lost a claim that a website called glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com was registered in bad faith and in violation of his trademark rights.
The website was founded by Isaac Eiland-Hall earlier this year in response to a joke on odd-news site Fark about Beck’s lack of denial for a non-existent murder/rape. Eiland-Hall argued to WIPO that he registered the website as a satirical critique of Beck’s conspiratorial politics.WIPO’s arbitration panel agreed that the website appeared “to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that (Eiland-Hall) appears genuinely to believe is employed by (Beck) in the provision of political commentary, and for that reason (Eiland-Hall) can be said to be making a political statement.”
The domain name dispute resolution body added Eiland-Hall’s speech was “strongly protected” under the First Amendment.
http://nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html
Paul Krugman hit the nail on the head here when he said:
What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.
The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?
But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.
When Hofstadter wrote, the right wing felt dispossessed because it was rejected by both major parties. That changed with the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.
Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base almost always took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite. Thus in 2004 George W. Bush ran on antiterrorism and “values,” only to announce, as soon as the election was behind him, that his first priority was changing Social Security.
But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.
Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.
Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.
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And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.
Well since precedence has been set, I am free to open my did-barak-obama-rape-and-murdere-a-young-girl.com web site with out fear of government retribution or being sued.
#42 This is why right-wingers don’t make good comedians. They don’t understand humor, satire in particular.
*sigh*
Yes, Benjamin, you could do that, but you’re missing the point. Glenn Beck is the one who’s making outrageous accusations, and then when the person he accuses doesn’t deny his obviously outrageous accusations, he claims they’re guilty. When you use a person’s dishonest tactic against them, that’s satire. Since Obama doesn’t use that tactic, using it against him wouldn’t be satire, it would be dumb. And it would expose you as a clueless wingnut. Capice?
#43 Fido – Nicely put.
#43, Phydeau,
Very well put, sir. Unfortunately I am afraid it is wasted on people too stooopid to realize Beck just may be wrong.
#45 Mr Fusion,
Is “stooopid” a real word to you, or are you just too stupid to spell “stupid” correctly?
Some things are funny and some things are so sick that even if it was meant to be funny it still means you are one sick puke. The website passes my puke test.
I would feel the same way if it was going the other way. If it isn’t wrong if your friends do to someone you don’t like it isn’t wrong if it is done to you. Wrong is just wrong no matter who does it.
#46, Bob,
Your very question is stooopid.
First, say the word, as I wrote it, out loud. Now think of yourself as you say it. The longer it takes to understand the more this applies to you. If you fail to get it, then there never was any discussion.
Art still lives!
(And yes, satire is Art.)