Submitted by Sheldon Rampton 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. The lawsuit claims that Franken's title infringes Fox's trademark on the phrase "fair and balanced," and characterizes Franken as "shrill and unstable," a "parasite" whose behavior is "either intoxicated or deranged." Evidently the network is still fuming over Franken's hilarious run-in with Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly at a recent book publishers' convention. The Authors Guild has issued a statement calling Fox's lawsuit "deplorable" and is compiling a list 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.
Printer-friendly version