Thank god I can ridicule Glenn Beck and Chiropractors.

I think it’s sad anyone can take seriously a Glenn Beck legal claim based on the allegedly defamatory nature of a domain named “glennbeckraped andmurdered- ayounggilrl.com,” but I’m grateful at least for a First Amendment that, I believe, makes it very unlikely any such claim by Beck would prevail and that allows me to title a blog post “I don’t think Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl, but why won’t he deny it?”

I could, after all, live in England, where, as Olivia Judson writes,

Several times this summer, science journalists in London have leaned over to me and said something along the lines of, “I was thinking of writing,” and gone on to describe an article that was going to be critical of someone. “But then,” the speaker would gloomily conclude, “I thought to myself, ‘Simon Singh,’ and I decided not to.”

In England, as the Guardian explains, not only will the legal costs of defending a libel action will be considerable, often running into hundreds of thousands of pounds,” but, unlike in the States, “the loser almost always has to pay the costs of the winner, plus any damages awarded to the claimant.” As Judson points out, in England not only do “[l]ibel cases cost little to bring — you can make a no-win-no-fee arrangement with your lawyer” — but, most importantly, the defendant has the burden of proving the allegedly defamatory statement is true. In contrast, in the States, a public figure must prove the defamatory statement not only was false but was made with a reckless disregard for the truth. And even a non-public figure has the burden of proving the falsity of the allegedly defamatory statement.

Why is Simon Singh the person potential critics of bad science are reluctant to become? Because Singh is being sued by the British Chirpractic Association for libel after he wrote the following:

The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

At least in this country we can hear presentations like the following:

Conventional chiropractic [medicine] is a confused pseudoscience that attracts non-discerning customers and students just as surely do supermarket tabloids, astrologers, palm readers and psychics. Don Paulin, who directs the Victims of Chiropractic outreach and is a member of the National Council Against Health Fraud, will examine the status of chiropractic and illustrate his talk with videos.

You can feel the way you want to about chiropractors, but I’ve never seen any evidence that satisfies me its benefits are anything other than the result of a placebo effect, and I’m glad I can say so without any great fear of being hauled into a court on charges of libel. Though, as the Guardian article linked to above suggests, since my posts can be read anywhere, I suppose there’s some risk I could be sued by chiropractors in England.

I don’t think Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl, but why won’t he deny it?

Arts Technica reports that 2 days after the site glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com Beck’s media company “had contacted the domain registrar demanding that the “‘highly defamatory domain name’ glennbeckrapedandmurdered- ayounggirlin1990.com be deleted, that the WhoisGuard privacy protection service be revoked, and that the owner’s contact information be turned over to the lawyers.”

This is a classic case of an effort to “chill” speech you don’t like. Parody and political speech are protected by the First Amendment, but who wants to take on the costs of litigating against a media giant? One of my students asked the other day if there were any way for an individual to get funding to litigate against a large corporation. I explained that there really isn’t. If you’re really, really poor, you might get legal aid, but not likely even if you’re really, really poor to defend against a lawsuit like Beck’s. We have a brilliant legal system, but it’s been entirely distorted by inequalities of wealth and the expense that has become accepted as part of litigation. Someone with little legal merit to their claims or defenses can prevail merely by wearing down and exhausting the resources of their adversary.

I myself wouldn’t begin to conclude from seeing the domain name that there was any real evidence Glenn Beck had raped and murdered a young girl, but one expert in the article thought Beck’s lawsuit had enough merit that it can’t merely be brushed off:

“I don’t think ‘Ha ha it’s a joke’ at the end gets you off,” he says; if the parodic information is defamatory, it’s risky for the defendant in such cases. That’s complicated by the fact that the original domain name made the allegedly defamatory claim against Beck—and of course no one stumbling across the site in a search engine or elsewhere would see any disclaimer. In such cases, the domain name itself is a standalone piece of content; the disclaimer may help regarding the website content, but it won’t necessarily transfer a cone of protection to the domain name as well.

This is what we get when we take seriously allegations like the one that Obama wants to euthanize my mom (would she be so lucky! — sorry, that’s an entirely different and very personal topic).

ADDENDUM: Beck does want to beat Rep. Charles Rangel to death with a shovel, and he wants to kill other people, right?

ADDENDUM 2: This guy Beck may or may not be a rapist and murderer (but why won’t he just prove his innocence?), but he is definitely a first-rate parodist, pointing out the Communist propaganda hidden in New York City. Who knew John D. Rockefeller was really a communist, and that Isaiah’s timeless call to beat swords into plowshares is really an ancient “progressive” plot? He’s hilarious. Everyone does just laugh at this stuff, right?