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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Large damages are often reduced, and perhaps what Jones said should be protected speech, or perhaps emotional damages should never be recoverable. But if you are going to make the claim, you probably should look into what actually happened, because you seem to be very much understating both what Jones did and the emotional suffering experienced by the plaintiffs, both of which were way beyond the bar normally needed to recover for emotional damages for defamation in the US.

I think it should be covered under the same parody laws that protected Hustler when they got sued after claiming Falwell lost his virginity with his mom.

Jones is a clown no one should be taking him seriously. Just like Stern and Opie and Anthony and all the other shock jocks who do wild and stupid stuff designed to generate an emotional response for entertainment.

I'm going to guess there's no serious expectation that anyone reading the Hustler story about Falwell having sex with his mom believed this actually reflected reality, that it was a journalistic effort to uncover Falwell's legacy of incest that actually happened. I'm also going to guess that there is a serious expectation that people who listened to Jones claiming that Sandy Hook parents were crisis actors would seriously believe that this indeed reflected reality, that the supposed parents were really a part of some grand conspiracy.

Yes, and note that the Hustler fake ad included the statement: "ad parody — not to be taken seriously."

No should listen to Alex Jones and seriously believe his statements are news, any more than Homer is representing a true history of Odeseus' voyage home or the Aneid is the history of how Rome was founded. It's entertainment for people who want their stories to be larger than life.

Then he doesn't get to have it both ways - just like Jon Stewart and 'Clown Nose On, Clown Nose Off'. You can't claim to be telling the truth about what is really going on, the truth that the powerful don't want you to know, then claim "oh no, I'm only a comedian and this is an entertainment show, not a news show, nobody is meant to believe the stories" when it suits you.

'The Lizard People run the world from their secret Moon base that was built by the Nazis' is an entertainment story. 'This shooting never happened, there were no dead children and the people claiming to be their parents are all actors' is not.

What if the entertaining aspect is exaggerating and dramatizing the news until it becomes absurd? I think there should be room for that in the 1st.

Pollution is wrecking frog DNA enough to alter secondary sex characteristics as serious news, expressed as the absurd, the powers that be are so evil they turn frogs gay simply for their twisted delight is an absurd exaggeration, to use a less controversial examples.

Did he even make that defense in court? If not, he has only himself to blame. But I doubt it would fly anyway; I've seen no indication that he doesn't believe all the twisted clown-car shit that he says.

He didn't make any defense in court, his case was decided without a trial, because the judge didn't like how he was complying with discovery.

He wasn't allowed to present any defense in court, since a default judgement was entered against him.

That's not true.

Jones spent years, starting from May 2018, stalling on discovery. Eventually, the judge called it quits and entered that default judgment, at which point they moved on to a jury trial for damages.

He decided not to present any defense, apparently because guilt in the default judgment meant the judge denied his usual strategy of shouting "I'M INNOCENT" over and over.

Jones’ own lawyers had earlier indicated they would have him testify again Wednesday to bolster his arguments that the damages awarded to the plaintiffs should be minimal.

But Jones said he would likely be held in contempt if he took the stand again, because the judge would not allow him to say he is “innocent.”

Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, told the judge that his client was boycotting the proceedings because he feels he’s being asked to either commit perjury, be held in contempt of court or invoke his rights not to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.

He had plenty of opportunities to submit an actual defense. Doing so would have involved cooperating with the court, though, and he wasn't willing to go that far.

Jones is telling the literal truth there. He could not defend himself in the damages phase because he would not be allowed to assert the defense that he did not commit defamation, because that had already been decided (without a trial) by the court's default judgement.

And it conveniently elides all the opportunities he did have to defend himself, but instead chose to shoot himself in the foot.

It’s like a criminal killed while evading the police. Not how things are supposed to go, but he did it to himself.

How do you figure that Jones's statements were parody? He intended that people take them as truth, not as parody.

Because everything he does is to be shocking to entertain.

But shocking != parody. Nor, technically, does parody = entertaining. Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 US 569, 583 (1994) ["'First Amendment protections do not apply only to those who speak clearly, whose jokes are funny, and whose parodies succeed'" (quoting Yankee Publishing Inc. v. News America Publishing, Inc., 809 F. Supp. 267, 280 (SDNY 1992) )

I mean, what exactly was he parodying? Parody by definition involves a reference to something else.

He's a parody of serious news.

But, again, surely you don't think he presents it as parody. Which is what makes something parody.

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