Fox Sues Franken [1]
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton [2] on
The Fox News Network is suing comedian Al Franken in an effort to block publication of his upcoming new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right [3]. The lawsuit claims that Franken's title infringes Fox's trademark on the phrase "fair and balanced [4]," and characterizes Franken as "shrill and unstable," a "parasite" whose behavior is "either intoxicated or deranged." Evidently the network is still fuming [5] over Franken's hilarious run-in with Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly [6] at a recent book publishers' convention [7]. The Authors Guild [8] has issued a statement calling Fox's lawsuit "deplorable" and is compiling a list [9] of other books that could be suppressed under the same legal argument, such as Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions or Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.