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Glenn Beck vs. the Murder Meme
| Thu Oct. 8, 2009 2:25 PM PDT
Is Glenn Beck a murderer? No, of course not. But that hasn't stopped a LOL-seeker from setting up the satirical site Glenn Beck Raped And Murdered A Young Girl In 1990.com to taunt the emotionally fragile Fox host with a dose of his own brand of argument by innuendo. As it explains: "We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 — in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations."
A few weeks ago, Beck sicced his attorneys on the site and asked the Internet gods (i.e., the World Intellectual Property Office) to transfer its URL to him. In a nice twist, his lawyers alleged that the site both rips off Beck's brand and is "plainly libelous, plainly false" and therefore "is likely to cause confusion for consumers"—presumably consumers who think Beck has set up a site to spread scurrilous rumors about himself. What Beck and his lawyers don't get is that they're not trying to shut down a website; they're trying to shut down an Internet meme. And that's why they're about to get a steaming helping of FAIL.
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The lawyer for Isaac Eiland-Hall, keeper of the offending domain, calmly lays this out in his response [PDF] to Beck's complaint, in which he explains how the Beck-is-a-murderer meme got started. Short version: It involved a Gilbert Gottfried routine and and a Fark.com poster who, at precisely 8:32:26 PM on August 31, 2009, posed the loaded question: "Why haven't we had an official response to the rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990?" A meme was born.
Beck may prevail against Eiland-Hall, but that won't help him at all. By going after the murder site, Beck's just giving new life to a one-trick idea that already has a Twitter account, a Twitter hashtag, two Facebook pages, an Encyclopedia Dramatica entry, at least two spinoff sites, and its own shorthand—GB1990. Good luck shutting all that down, even if he wins the URL battle. Before freaking out over what is essentially standard operating procedure for Internet satire, Beck might have considered whether it's worse to have 1 site saying you're a criminal or 10,000 saying you're clueless.
Comments
Alternate domain names for the site
Submitted by Name Withheld (not verified) on Fri Oct. 9, 2009 10:51 AM PDT.
Two alternate domains that are not currently under dispute that go to the site:
http://didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com/
And one sub-project to amuse:
http://hasglennbeckdeniedrapingandmurderingayounggirlin1990.com/
Take care,
-Name Withheld
Those old Norm McDonald radio ads
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Oct. 14, 2009 9:25 AM PDT.
Those websites remind me of an ad N McD did for one of the search engines in which he says "so I went to 'wheredobearsgowhiletheyarehibernating.com' and they didn't have the answer I wanted"
All Beck had to do was say,
Submitted by Mrs. Garside (not verified) on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 1:02 PM PDT.
All Beck had to do was say, "Of course not! Get lives people!" and then get on with his own life.
Now we must wonder, could there be some truth to these rumors? :)
When Obamanoids ATTACK !
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri Oct. 30, 2009 7:52 PM PDT.
It's Sad when Liberals are so DESPERATE for attention that they do things things like this....
Glenn Beck
Submitted by NancyP on Wed Nov. 4, 2009 7:09 AM PST.
If it hadn't been for Beck's over reaction I would have never heard about it. Beck has offended a lot of Moderates with his comments as well. And look at what the desperate Conservatives do for attention - mention Separation of Church and State and they slobber at the mouth and threaten to sue. This is all about nothing and it would have gone away faster if Beck had ignored it but the truth about Beck is that he's a publicity whore.
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