Here’s One for the First Amendment

I always get a kick when the right-wingers do something stupid that blows up in their faces. Actually, I enjoy the backfiring against anyone doing something particularly stupid, but when it’s the Republicans, so much the better.

In this case, it all started with comedian, satirist, and conservative bane Al Franken’s new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Note those words “Fair and Balanced”; awfully similar to Fox News’s slogan, no?

Well, that’s what they thought, anyway, and they decided to sue him to stop it.

Baaad idea.

The publicity surrounding the suit boosted sales of the book to a degree to which no advertising campaign could ever have aspired. At last check, the book was ranked first on Amazon.com’s best-seller list.

As might be expected (you know, we’ve got that whole freedom-of-speech thing going on), a federal judge threw out Fox’s request for an injunction to stop sale of the book, saying — I love this — “There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case. This case is wholly without merit, both factually and legally.” And yesterday, Fox dropped the suit altogether; Al Franken was reported to be very disappointed, hoping they’d have continued it “for a few more news cycles.”

My favorite part is linking to all of these news stories via Fox News’s own website, which — because they carry Associated Press stories — can’t quite spout their usual revisionist-news rhetoric and pretend the whole thing never happened.