That is hilarious. On Countdown Keith Olberman suggested Fox News trademark ''without merit, both factually and legally". The case was decided in a matter of minutes too.
Franken bests Fox Judge calls conservative network case against comedian "wholly without merit" -- and says it could lose "fair and balanced" trademark. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Michelle Goldberg Aug. 23, 2003 | His voice full of amused contempt, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin refused Fox News's request for an injunction against author and comedian Al Franken's new book on Friday. "There are hard cases and there are easy cases," said Chin. "This is an easy case. The case is wholly without merit both factually and legally…It is ironic that a media company that should seek to protect the First Amendment is instead seeking to undermine it." The hearing couldn't have gone better for Franken, who is being sued by Fox because the network claims his new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," violates Fox's trademark of the phrase "Fair and Balanced." Fox had sought to block Franken's use of the phrase pending a trial for trademark infringement, in which it hoped to win compensation for damages. But Chin's ruling suggested there might not be a trial. Besides rejecting Fox's petition for an injunction, Chin practically invited Franken's lawyers to file for dismissal. And he hinted that if it pursues its lawsuit, Fox may lose the very trademark it's trying to defend -- a trademark that, according to the suit, Fox has spent $61 million promoting. In its legal filings, Fox's suit has imitated the bellowing bluster of its talk show star Bill O'Reilly, who by several accounts pushed the network to take on Franken. It called Franken a "C-level political commentator" with a "sophomoric approach to political commentary" who "appears to be shrill and unstable" and whose views "lack any serious depth or insight." "ince Franken's reputation as a political commentator is not of the same caliber as the stellar reputations of FNC's on-air talent, any association between Franken and Fox News is likely to blue or tarnish Fox News' distinctive mark," the lawsuit argued with O'Reillian self-righteousness. Yet Fox wasn't able to set the tone in Chin's downtown Manhattan courtroom, where the afternoon hearing unfolded with wry, low-key humor, all of it at the network's expense. The cover of Franken's book shows the author, dressed in a conservative blue suit, standing in front of a quartet of television monitors showing the heads of O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, George Bush and Dick Cheney, with the word “Liar” splashed across them all in red. It arrived in stores Thursday, its release date moved up weeks to capitalize on the lawsuit's publicity, which catapulted it to the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list. Dori Ann Hanswirth, Fox's lawyer, argued that buyers might be confused and think that the book was actually put out by Fox News, thus diluting and tarnishing the Fox brand. "Defendants' use of the Trademark…on the Preliminary Cover is likely to cause confusion among the public about whether Fox News has authorized or endorsed the Book, and about whether Franken is affiliated with FNC [Fox News Channel]," said the suit. "Franken is commonly perceived as having to trade off of the name recognition of others in order to make money." Chin didn't buy it. "Is it really likely someone is going to be confused as to whether Fox News or Bill O'Reilly is endorsing this book?" asked the judge. "It is likely consumers could believe that," replied Hanswirth. Later she added, "There's no real message that this is a book of humor or political satire. It's a deadly serious cover and it's using the Fox News trademark" to sell itself. In response, the judge pointed out that one of O'Reilly's own books is titled "The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life." "Is that not a play on "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly?'" Chin asked, noting that the movie title is also trademarked. "I don't know," replied Hanswirth. "You don't know?" asked the judge. "I don't know," she repeated, before arguing, once again, that Franken is "intending to use the trademark to sell the product." Hanswirth went on to argue that Franken has diluted Fox's trademark by using it "to ridicule Fox's No. 1 talent, Mr. O'Reilly." She then suggested that, because Coulter is on the cover, "somebody looking at this could determine Ms. Coulter has some kind of official relationship with Fox." "The President and Vice President are also on the cover, are they not?" asked Chin. "Are consumers likely to believe they are associated with Fox News?" Defending Franken was legendary first amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who seemed to be enjoying himself as he presented his case to a sympathetic court. "A book is allowed to criticize the holder of a trademark and is allowed to mock a trademark as well," he said. Were it otherwise, "it would be a different country." He pointed out that Fox's lawyers don't seem to believe their own argument the book might be mistaken for a Fox production. After all, one of their initial complaints was that the cover was "defamatory per se of Mr. O'Reilly." Abrams quoted a letter from one of Fox's lawyers to the Penguin Group, Franken's publisher, saying that the word "Lies" written over O'Reilly's face "unquestionably designates Mr. O'Reilly as one of the 'Lying Liars' to which the title of the book refers." Abrams said that if Fox pursued its case, he would challenge the validity of the "Fair and Balanced" trademark itself. In delivering his scathing opinion, Chin suggested that Abrams would probably succeed in such a challenge. "The mark is a weak one," he said. "It's highly unlikely that the phrase 'Fair and Balanced' is a valid trademark." Regardless, he said, "There is no likelihood of confusion. It is highly unlikely consumers are going to be misled into believing that Fox or O'Reilly are sponsors" of the book. "I don't know if Fox is arguing that its consumers are less sophisticated than people who would buy the book." When the court adjourned, a Fox spokesman offered a terse statement. "We don't care if it's Al Franken, Al Lewis or Weird Al Yankovic, we're going to protect our trademark and our talent." Abrams, meanwhile, told a throng of reporters that he was waiting to see whether Fox proceeded with its case before deciding whether to file for dismissal. "In light of Judge Chin's statement," he said, he and his team will also consider trying to force Fox to pay Franken's attorney's fees. And he noted that even if he doesn't get the opportunity to attack Fox's trademark of "Fair and Balanced," Chin's ruling opened the door for others to try. "It's now a very shaky trademark," he said. "Fox came in here saying, 'We spent $61 million on this trademark,'" Abrams said. "It would be poetic justice if Fox News were to lose the trademark they came into court to protect." - - - - - - - - - - - -
Floyd Abrams (Frankens' attorney) must have thought he had died and gone to heaven. God gave him a gummy bear in this case. Imagine getting a chance to rub Fox's nose in it and give them a spanking for soiling the law?
It's like they volunteered for a public spanking they never could have gotten otherwise, a spanking their pompous azzes richly and rightly deserve.
They might have to pay fees and lose their trademark, even I didn't think it would backfire that bad. From what I have read about murdoch and fox, when it comes to a situation where he has to choose between the bottom line and his political agenda, he will choose the bottom line 10 times out of 10. I think they will pull the plug rather than risk the money and embarassment that is to come. I hope they don't though.
Fox News probably didn't think it would backfire this badly. Lawyers who are favored by ideologues tend to have the same bent. They couldn't have believed they would put the Trademark at risk. Now it will be become a PUNCHLINE
It doesn't make any sense becasue they are being represented by Hogan & Hartson, which is a perfectly normal and respectable DC law firm that doesn't seem to have any agenda other than to make money like all law firms. They took on one huge, high profile dog here. I guess they are sucking up to the right wing to advance their substantial lobbying business.
I know all about that, FF, I know. There's a reason why I'm on the BBS and posting at odd hours of the evening...and it's probably the opposite of yours...
You post all the time because you're on vacation from work, or so I read; I post all the time because of the opposite reason: which is why was saying that I know how large law firms work....(or don't work, in this instance!)
uggh. If only they had let O'Reilly keep calling the shots on this one.... oh well Fox News Drops Franken Suit (AP) ERIN McCLAM, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK - Fox News dropped its lawsuit against Al Franken on Monday, three days after a federal judge refused to block the liberal humorist from using the Fox slogan "Fair and Balanced" on the cover of his book. The lawsuit had sought unspecified damages from Franken and Penguin Group, publisher of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." "It's time to return Al Franken to the obscurity that he's normally accustomed to," Fox News spokeswoman Irena Steffen said. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin denied Fox's request for an injunction against the book cover. Fox contended that some people might be tricked into thinking the book was a Fox product because the cover includes the words "Fair and Balanced" and a picture of Bill O'Reilly, the network's top anchor. But the judge said Fox's case was "wholly without merit," and the trademark "Fair and Balanced," registered by Fox in 1998, was weak. He also said the network was "trying to undermine the First Amendment." Floyd Abrams, who represented Franken and Penguin in the case, said the withdrawal of the suit was "welcome, if overdue." "Fox's lack of grace in ending its suit is of the same nature as its name-calling and silly efforts to deal with criticism of it in the first place," Abrams said. The lawsuit itself, filed earlier this month, described Franken as a "C-level political commentator" who "appears to be shrill and unstable." A message left with Franken was not immediately returned. Publicity surrounding the case helped boost Franken's book to the top of the Amazon.com best-seller list. Penguin rushed the book into stores early and ordered additional copies printed after being sued. ___
Is there a more petty group of people? Yeah, two national best sellers (now three) and four Emmy awards. Yup, he's obscure alright.
Fox News = the snotnose kid who got the crap beat out of him, but still has to talk big for his buddies
They can dish it out, but they can't take it" Al Franken talks about his big victory over the Fox News bullies, why Bush can be thrown out in 2004, and comedy as a political weapon. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Laura McClure Aug. 27, 2003 | Al Franken got the glad tidings while vacationing in Italy. He had fallen asleep reading "The Tipping Point" and mulling marketing ideas for his forthcoming "Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," when a friend staying in the villa walked into his bedroom and woke him up. "Al!" he said. "You're being sued by Fox!" After a second-and-a-half of considering this, Franken responded: "Good!" Then he fell back asleep. If Fox's intention was to break a large, undercooked ostrich egg on its corporate face while pouring streams of golden ducats into Franken's pockets, it carried out its plan to perfection. As everyone who pays attention to such matters knows by now, a judge laughed its copyright-infringement lawsuit (Fox claimed it trademarked the phrase "fair and balanced") out of court -- even adding insult to injury by warning the right-wing media behemoth that its ownership of the phrase it claimed to have spent $61 million developing was extremely dubious. And sales of Franken's book soared sky-high on the publicity, hitting #1 on Amazon's list Thursday. All of which must have been bitter wormwood for the popular Fox talk-show host Bill O'Reilly, who many speculated was the moving force behind the now-dropped lawsuit after his notorious May 31 exchange with Franken at the Los Angeles Book Expo. Under Franken's tender ministrations, O'Reilly was reduced to sputtering "shut up!" and demanding that the gadfly comedian and writer remove O'Reilly's "splotchy" face off the cover of Franken's upcoming book. For the man the Fox complaint called "shrill and unstable" and (somewhat unnecessarily, considering that charge) "not a well-respected voice in American politics," it was all in a day's work. Franken, who created the famously insipid Stuart Smalley character during his 15-year tenure at "Saturday Night Live" and has written four books, says driving conservatives off the deep end is easy. "O'Reilly keeps saying I'm a smear artist," he says, "but all I do is just say what they said...It's jujitsu. You just use what they do against them. And when you do that, they get mad." His most recent prank even got the attention of John Ashcroft. Writing on the letterhead of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, where he was a fellow, Franken sent notes to 27 senior Bush administration officials, including the U.S. Attorney General himself, asking each to "share a moment when you were tempted to have sex but were able to overcome your urges." The stories would be used, he told them, in a book about public school abstinence programs called "Savin' It!" On Tuesday, Salon talked to Franken about his reaction to the judge's ruling. Speaking by cell phone from a New York airport, Franken talked about being "a cute, cuddly kind of deranged" and the need for liberal talk radio, before sending the interviewer through the luggage X-ray machine. What was your first reaction upon hearing about the suit? Were you surprised? I was surprised because they had first threatened to sue about two weeks after the Book Expo dust-up with what's his name, and then they didn't do anything, and the News Corp. [which owns Fox] owns Harper Collins, so they know how books work. So they waited until they knew we were printing books. That surprised me, because on the one hand that seems like a smart thing to do, because that punishes us and in a way they prevail, but it hurts their case, because that's just sitting on your hands. Especially if you're trying to get a preliminary injunction, you can't do that. So I was surprised, but I was also very pleased. I was in Italy, and I'd brought the book "The Tipping Point" to maybe give me a new perspective on how to promote my book. But I put off reading it for about five or six days because I didn't want to think about my book for at least five or six days. So then I took "The Tipping Point" to bed and started reading it and it's a great book and about halfway through I start to fall asleep, and I start saying to myself: "Must think of ... tipping point ... for book ... must ... think of ..." and then fell asleep. And my next conscious moment someone in the house walked in my room and said, "Al? You're being sued by Fox." And it took me about a second and a half, and I looked at them and I said, "Good!" and then I went back to sleep. And then I got up a couple of hours later -- I was doing a lot of sleeping in Italy, because I'd really been in a rush to get the book done and it was very hard -- and I went on my e-mail and started reading, and all Team Franken was e-mailing the complaint that I was, let's see, unstable, shrill and unstable ... "Shrill and unstable" ... "deranged" ... and "a parasite," to be precise. Right. And what was funny about that was I noticed that it said in the complaint that the press said I was this. And it wasn't until I got back to the U.S. and looked at the complaint that I saw a reference to where it came from, which was the prestigious WashingtonDispatch.com, which boasts on its homepage that if you're an amateur writer writing on a whim you have a much better chance of getting published on their Web site than on any other Web site. So that's where they got that. So are you shrill and deranged? I'm deranged, but I don't think I'm shrill. I think I'm the kind of deranged that's kind of cute and cuddly. Like the Danny DeVito character in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." [Laughter.] Are you happy with the judge's decision? This has brought you so much publicity that I wonder if part of you doesn't wish Fox had appealed instead of dropping the suit. Well, if Fox had gone on to appeal it probably would have strung out the thing and it would have probably been better for me in that sense. But you know, I was talking to our lawyers over the weekend and I said they gotta withdraw the case because it would be totally irrational to continue, and they said, 'Well, the case is irrational to begin with.' I said, 'Yeah, but it was sort of based on an infantile rage by one of their commentators and to placate him they did it, but for some reason they didn't realize how stupid they'd look.' So now that a judge has basically said -- [Salon columnist] Joe Conason e-mailed me and said -- 'I have a new trademark for Fox: Fox News Channel. Wholly without merit.' Bill O'Reilly really made this personal, didn't he? It sounds like he really had it out for you after the Book Expo flare. Well, I don't want to make this personal ... But he already did ... Just because he made it personal, I don't have to. OK, then what does this say about the Fox conservatives' mentality that they would bring this suit on his behalf? Well, it says a lot. The levels of irony of the suit are manifold. Either manifold or manifest. Both, I think. Yeah. Well anyway, using the word 'press' for WashingtonDispatch.com is very much their style. It's distortion, it's shoddy, and it's lame. So I talk about Fox, I talk about Ann Coulter, I talk about the Wall St. Journal editorial page, I talk about the Washington Times, I talk about Bernie Goldberg, and Rush -- all those people employ that sort of m.o., they all do the same thing. Also just that Fox trademarked "fair and balanced" -- that's pretty ironic in and of itself, although the judge ruled that their trademark probably wasn't valid. And then there's the bullying thing, which -- O'Reilly went on his radio show and said that the purpose of the lawsuit was to punish me for coming after Fox. So this is the mindset of the right, that they have to punish you. Joe Wilson, the former Gabon ambassador, was sent to Niger by the CIA and came back and said the uranium claims weren't true. And when the controversy started broiling again about the 16 words in the State of the Union address and Wilson wrote the piece in New York Times, senior administration officials blew the cover on his wife, who was a covert [CIA] operative. And it jeopardized the lives not only of her contacts but every American, because she was a covert agent in weapons of mass destruction. And it's a way of intimidating other analysts who might come forward, and there's a parallel here: You will be punished if you come after us. I really think the Wilson thing is the most disgraceful action of any White House since Iran Contra. More than Clinton and Monica? There's a difference between getting a blow job and lying about it, and blowing a national security asset. Then why do you think there's this current defeatist meme among liberals that none of the current Democratic presidential candidates are capable of beating Bush? Do you agree with them? No, because I think people are catching on -- if you look at the latest Newsweek poll the president has 44 percent reelect, the lowest since before 9/11, and you usually need 50 percent, or at least a plurality, to win. Now, Bush didn't get that in the last election, so he may be able to steal it again, who knows. In politics, a month is forever, so obviously these things will change, but in the last three months Bush's position has been eroding significantly. Which Democratic candidates do you favor? Well, I think Kerry, Dean, Gephardt, Edwards, Graham are all serious candidates. All of those guys could make great presidents, and each has his strengths. Dean is obviously mobilizing people, even people who haven't voted before. I think he's willing to take it to Bush. I think Kerry has incredible depth and breadth of experience and knowledge, and is sort of inoculated on national security issues by virtue of not just his experience in Vietnam but his knowledge of that stuff through his work in the Senate. The same with Graham, in terms of his depth of knowledge, as former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and as a governor. I mean people like governors, and he's from Florida. What do you think about Gore having dropped out of the race? I thought it made sense, in a way, because I think what he said -- 'If I run it's going to be a rehash of the 2000 campaign and we've got to look to the future.' So I think he took himself out more for his own good, but also for the good of the country. Although he would have made a great president, and I really think he won the election. What about the California recall? Arianna Huffington is an old friend of yours ... Arianna is a friend of mine, I really like Arianna, and you know I'm a Democrat, so it'd be hard for me to tell you exactly what I would do there. I would probably focus on what was going on a couple of days before the campaign, if Arianna didn't have a chance to win I'd certainly vote for Bustamante. I'm a Democrat, I think you have to do pragmatic things, and I don't want to see Schwarzenegger or another Republican take that governorship. And your take on Arnold? He's another guy who has entered a race for an office for which he doesn't seem particularly suited or experienced. Also, I have a few problems with his history, the fact that even after it was shown that [former U.N. Secretary-General] Kurt Waldheim participated in the massacre of Jews, Schwarzenegger still considered him a friend, and toasted him at his wedding, to the horror of the entire Kennedy family. What is it about you in particular that gets under the skin of conservatives like O'Reilly and Limbaugh, more than other satirists? Well, O'Reilly didn't really start hating me until the Book Expo. He came up to me after the Radio and TV Correspondents' dinner last April and said, "Oh, you did a great job." So it really was about my explaining why he was on the cover of my book at the Book Expo, which he understandably wasn't happy about ... You know what, I have to go through airport security now, so my phone will have to go through the machine, but that's OK. You want to hear what it sounds like when it goes through? Sure. Wait, can they do that? Yeah, I think an on phone can go through, can't it? Yeah. So here, hold on. [Puts the phone in the tray and it goes through the X-ray machine. It is quiet in there, with occasional sounds of mumbling. Clatter as Franken picks up the phone again.] OK, so we were talking about why you get under the skin of ... Well, they don't like it because I'm a liberal who's not afraid to take them on, and to take them on, on their own terms. I'm fascinated with their methods, and therefore I call them on it, and they don't like that. These guys are notorious -- they can dish it out but that can't take it. There are not a lot of people like you doing this right now. Why do you think that is? Because there is an aspect to it that's sort of ugly. You have to be willing to get the day-by-day dish from NewsMax.com, you have to be willing to see things like the complaint they ran against me. Those kind of techniques. Which I don't use. I won't sink to that level, but what's great about it is when you expose them, it's jujitsu. You just use what they do against them. And when you do that, they get mad. They go, "How dare you read what I said on Nexis!" O'Reilly keeps saying I'm a smear artist, but all I do is just say what they said. They think somehow it's unfair that they're held accountable for what they said, I guess. I don't know. They're awful people. I'm not talking about conservatives, I'm talking about people who do this kind of distortion. There are a lot of conservatives I like, but they don't indulge in what the guys I write about do. Let's talk a little bit about the "Savin' It" letter you sent to Ashcroft and the 26 other officials. Some journalists have accused you of lying, that by sending the letter you've lied in the same way as the people you write about. I don't know why, but people have been trying to put this in the same category as the other kinds of lies. No one who reads the book thinks I'm writing a book called "Savin' It." I think even in the context of receiving it it's clear what it is, which is a prank to these 27 people, but it's not like announcing to the public that I won something I didn't win, or that I'm going to fund education for people that I'm not going to fund, or that the vast majority of my tax cuts are going to the bottom, or that I was vigilant before 9/11, or that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Those are really lies; this is a totally different thing. It's a chapter in a satirical book which makes a satirical point. But it's something the media can bring up, and I think it's their of way of going like, "We're going to give a fair and balanced news report." What was it like having to issue an apology for it? Oh, I didn't mind. I shouldn't have written on Shorenstein stationery. I did get one letter thanking me for the apology, from Cardinal Egan. From the original letter I got four letters wishing me good luck with "Savin' It," but that their bosses were too busy to give their abstinence stories. In your book you say that there's really not a liberal bias in the media, and not even necessarily a conservative bias, but more of a global profit-motive bias, which is why news is skewed towards the sensational, violence and sex. Is there any sex or violence scandal I should know about you before I take this to my editor? I think when I was intoxicated and deranged I went on a chain saw massacre, but ... oh, man, I shouldn't have told you that. That was stupid. If I wasn't so drunk now I probably wouldn't have told you. But I think the statute of limitations has run out on that. Hey, whatever happened with that liberal radio show idea that Sheldon Drobny wanted you to do? It's in the works. What they're trying to do is put together a network, and I would fit into that three hours a day. This is a very ambitious undertaking and they're progressing. I'm not at liberty to disclose everything that they're doing, but there's been progress, and chances are growing that this will happen and I'll be a part of it. The problem is, with radio these days, if it's talk radio it's conservative talk radio. You can't put me on after Rush Limbaugh because it's like putting classic rock after hip-hop or something. Are you still interested in being the liberal alternative to Rush Limbaugh? Well, I don't know if I'd put it that way, but yeah. It's interesting that the analogy you just used -- classic rock and hip-hop -- has you being the softer voice, in a sense. Well, no, it's putting classic rock on after something that's incompatible. Me after Rush, I want to get the analogy straight. OK, but conventional wisdom has it that liberals are too soft to do Limbaugh-style attack radio -- that the reason there are only conservative talk radio hosts is because only conservatives are capable of it. Do you think that's true? Where does that myth come from, if not? I think there's the empirical evidence that talk radio is dominated by conservatives, so you could draw the conclusion that liberals can't do it. But I think you can do liberal talk radio, and this is something we should have started doing 10 years ago and we didn't. There have been a few fitful efforts by individuals to do things, that haven't succeeded for one reason or another, but I think you can do it. Liberals have a little bit of a different mindset, in which I think liberals by nature look for information and conservatives look for ammunition. NPR, for example, is just giving information, and NPR's very popular. But conservatives consider it to be liberal because they're not bloviating, they're actually giving information. So I like to think of our progressive network as sort of NPR with more entertainment and fewer reports on Appalachian quilts. [Slips into an imitation of Garrison Keillor for "Prairie Home Companion"]: "There's a man ... (short pause, cough) ... in Minnesota. Who is ... building a road across the state for no reason. Today on NPR we're going to be profiling him." [Laughs.] We probably won't be doing a lot of those. Instead we'll be putting words, ideas, thoughts, sounds together -- very little physical shtick -- to make people laugh. Real facts, real statistics, truth. See Rush and Hannity and those guys, their value-added is lying. My value-added will be comedy. What kind of role do you think satire like yours has in the national debate? I think it may have a big role. The president's credibility is beginning to crack, and I think humor can always play a role in doing that, if it's truthful and persuasive. I think people listen because it's more fun to listen. It's a way of truth telling that goes down easy. - - - - - - - - - - - -
Unfair and unbalanced? Al Franken is a satirist, so it's his job to poke fun at powerful people. But when he appropriated the Fox News slogan, the fallout went right to the top. Andrew Gumbel examines a court case that left red faces in high places 29 August 2003 The Independent (UK) Cast your mind forward to the morning of 3 November 2004. Imagine, just for a moment, that George W Bush has gone down to ignominious defeat in the US presidential election, his once sky-high popularity ratings pickaxed and bludgeoned into the ground like some rotten fencepost on a Texas ranch. All across the nation, people are asking where it all went wrong for the chief executive who had seemed so immune from criticism for so long. And the answer, they all agree, is the moment that the mighty Fox News Channel - the red-meat chomping, propaganda-spewing, flag-waving, all-screaming, ratings-topping cable station doubling as chief baggage carrier for the Bush administration - was reduced to utter humiliation by a single pesky New York comedian. Okay, I may be getting ahead of myself here. But it is absolutely true that Al Franken, a one-time writer and performer on Saturday Night Live who has made a splendid second career as a political satirist, has successfully turned the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News into a national laughing stock. In so doing, he has indeed struck a blow against an information (and disinformation) machine that has played a crucial role in spreading and enforcing the White House's with-us-or-against-us mentality. It is perhaps stretching the point to say that this is the beginning of the end of the Bush administration, even with Iraq going to hell and the economy down the toilet. But then, as you'll see, stretching the point is entirely in keeping with the nature of this story. The cause of the trouble is Franken's new book, a typically unabashed blend of razor-witted denunciation and old-fashioned gumshoe detective work directed at right-wing crazies both in and out of government. The title says it all: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. It doesn't take too profound an insight into the workings of irony to spot that Franken is pastiching the overheated rhetoric regularly employed by the targets of his satire. Hence the decision to print the title word "Lies" in bold red lettering across the likenesses of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and two of the loudest screamers on the airwaves: Ann Coulter, a scary blonde banshee who regards all liberals as traitors, and who wrote shortly after September 11 that "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"; and Bill O'Reilly, who likes to torment the guests on his top-rated Fox News show, The O'Reilly Factor, rebutting their arguments with sophisticated epithets such as "pinhead" and "vicious son of a b****". Now, it so happens that the phrase "fair and balanced" is also the official Fox News slogan - and trademarked as such. It may seem an odd boast for a station that routinely goes out of its way not to give the other side of the story; which crowed with ill-concealed delight when Bush won his protracted legal struggle to become President; and crowed again when the Republicans swept the board in last November's mid-term elections. Perhaps the slogan is part of the deception whereby Fox News has sought - with considerable success - to push the parameters of political debate in the United States ever further to the right. Perhaps it is actually an indication that someone, somewhere has a sneaking sense of humour about the whole operation. Either way, you can understand why Al Franken felt compelled to put it into the title of his book. But then the executives at Fox News made a fatal mistake. They rose to Franken's bait. Admittedly, he gave them every reason to be driven to distraction. Apart from the title and cover design, there was the fact that he had dug deep into the biographical background of O'Reilly and company and found them to be out-and-out liars about everything from family background to political party affiliation. (O'Reilly, claiming against all available evidence to be a voice of moderation, has always said he is a registered independent, but Franken found - and published - his voter registration form with a big black tick in the "Republican" box. Franken's chapter on O'Reilly is entitled "Lying, Splotchy Bully".) A couple of weeks ago, Fox chose to sue Franken for trademark infringement for the use of the phrase "fair and balanced". With entirely straight faces, their lawyers argued that innocent bookstore customers might actually think that the book was somehow endorsed or underwritten by Fox News. And, while they were at it, they made an attempt at wholesale character assassination. Franken, their brief said, had appeared "either intoxicated or deranged" at the annual White House correspondents' dinner last April. He was, in any case, "increasingly unfunny". "He is not a well-respected voice in American politics. Rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable." For Fox News to accuse anyone of being "shrill and unstable" is, of course, to invite immediate ridicule. One also has to question the wisdom of a television station accusing a comedian of losing his sense of humour in a way that causes half the world to burst into spontaneous laughter. Franken, for his part, could not have been more thrilled. He was on holiday in Umbria when the lawsuit was filed, taking a few days to recover from writing the book before launching into the publicity campaign for its publication, originally scheduled for next month. He had, in fact, just dozed off with his nose in a book when someone came into his room to tell him: "Al, you're being sued by Fox." "It took me about a second and a half to register this. Then I said 'Good!', and went back to sleep," Franken told me. The next morning, he put out a statement thanking Fox News from the bottom of his heart for providing more publicity than money could ever buy. His publisher, EP Dutton, promptly brought forward the book's release date - it came out last weekend - and advance orders sent it whizzing up Amazon's US sales charts from No 329 to No 1. Then came the court hearing, which started on 22 August. Judge Denny Chin of the US District Court in New York clearly relished the occasion and reduced the gallery to squeals of helpless laughter as he posed a series of questions to the Fox lawyers. "Do you think that the reasonable consumer, seeing the word 'lies' over Mr O'Reilly's face, would believe Mr O'Reilly is endorsing this book?" he asked. "To me, it's quite ambiguous," the hapless Fox lawyer, Dori Ann Hanswirth, replied to more laughter. Judge Chin said a consumer would have to be "completely dense" not to realise that the cover was a joke. He also warned Fox that the phrase "fair and balanced" was so generic that he was tempted to invalidate their trademark altogether. As it was, he was simply tossing the case out of court three days into the hearing. "There are hard cases and there are easy cases," he concluded. "This is an easy case." Franken's famous victory is being treated as little short of a godsend by President Bush's domestic opponents, who had begun to despair of ever finding a way to bypass the White House's highly insulated information pipeline feeding into a largely docile mainstream media. Particularly disheartening was the way the right-wing demagogues on radio and television - Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage, as well as O'Reilly and Coulter - would always come across as so strident and sure of themselves, even as they spouted lies and bogus statistics. The more thoughtful, reasoned voices of the moderate middle and the liberal left, by contrast, would be routinely squelched, either because they couldn't get their soundbites together in the limited time available or because they would be cut off in mid-flow and fail to fight back. Franken has found a way to redress this balance, and at the same time get under the skin of his adversaries like nobody else. His magic formula has two ingredients. The first is to throw back at his opponents the very techniques they use to such withering effect on others. Franken calls this political jujitsu - something he developed a few years ago when he wrote his hilarious, and devastating, deconstruction of the king of vulgar populist talk radio, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot: and Other Observations. The second is, simply, to be funny. "Their value-added is lying and distorting, my value-added is humour," he tells me. And Franken can be very funny. In his new book, already in its fifth printing, he writes a spoof letter to John Ashcroft, the ultraconservative Attorney General, asking him for a personal contribution to a book about the virtues of sexual abstinence. Franken suggests that Ashcroft, as a true believer, could be an ideal role model for young people aiming to save their virginity until after they are married. "Don't be afraid to share a moment when you were tempted to have sex, but were able to overcome your urges through willpower and strength of character. Be funny!" he writes. "Did a woman ever think you were homosexual just because you wouldn't have sex with her? Be serious... But most of all be real. Kids can spot a phoney a mile away." Viewed from across the Atlantic, the humour might seem unnecessarily cruel. But that is to misunderstand the nature of the opponents Franken is up against. Take, as a particularly egregious example, Bill O'Reilly's interview this year with Jeremy Glick, the son of a New York Port Authority worker who died in the rubble of the World Trade Center. O'Reilly was mad at Glick because he had signed a petition opposing war in Iraq. So he laid into him, not just for "mouthing... a marginal position in this society", but also for offending the memory of his father with his criticisms of President Bush and US military power. Glick tried to explain that his father had also disliked Bush and thought he had come to power illegitimately, but O'Reilly would have none of it. "You keep your mouth shut when you sit here exploiting those people," he fumed, calling Glick's views "a bunch of crap". O'Reilly then repeatedly shouted "Shut up!" before finally yanking off his guest's microphone and yelling after him, off camera: "Get out of my studio before I tear you to ****ing pieces!" Franken had his own set-to with O'Reilly a few months later, at a Los Angeles book fair. O'Reilly understandably felt uncomfortable sitting next to a giant poster of the cover of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and his anger slowly rose to boiling point as Franken meticulously documented O'Reilly's lengthy history of false claims that he had won two Peabodys, among the most prestigious awards in US journalism. Finally O'Reilly exploded, calling Franken an idiot and telling him at least twice to shut up. On a radio show two days later he said that if he and Franken had been living in the Old West, "I would have put a bullet right between his head [sic]." Several authoritative sources suggest that the impetus for the disastrous Fox lawsuit came from O'Reilly himself. There is certainly plenty of evidence that he cannot forgive Franken, referring to him recently as "a vile human being". Franken, though, has no interest in turning this into a personal vendetta. For him, it is all about reinvigorating opposition to President Bush, especially in the mainstream media which, in his view, became so cowed after September 11 that "their balls went right back into their body cavity". This might well be the moment, now that questions are being asked about the reasons for invading Iraq and the Bush administration is being more widely accused of peddling lies and distortions. "The wheels have fallen off. The façade of Bush's credibility is beginning to crack," Franken says. And at least a part of that is down to him and his exquisitely irritating new book.
