Said Roy Moore's lawyer Larry Klayton, quoted in "Sacha Baron Cohen, Showtime win dismissal of Roy Moore defamation lawsuit."
Moore fell for one of Baron Cohen's pranks and then sued Baron Cohen for $95 million, alleging defamation.
The judge said it was "clearly a joke," and "It is simply inconceivable that the program's audience would have found a segment with Judge Moore activating a supposed pedophile-detecting wand to be grounded in any factual basis."
Posts
2 comments:
Mary Beth writes:
"I thought it had become an accepted idea that a prank was only a joke if both parties involved found it funny. Otherwise, it's just being a bully. I don't know if it rises to the level of defamation, but I think it's wrong of the judge to dismiss it as just a joke.
"I don't care for Baron Cohen's style of humor. Watching someone intentionally embarrass someone else makes me very uncomfortable. I'm sure this colors my opinion on whether or not what he did was a "joke". It would be wrong of me to make a video that made my neighbor look like a creeper, and then post it to Nextdoor so everyone in the neighborhood could see it, even if I captioned it with the disclaimer that it was a joke. It would still affect how people viewed him. I don't see how it's less wrong just because the target is famous."
Tim writes:
"If defamation turns on the perception of the audience (do they believe the pedo-detector is real?), then at what point does the law recognize that it is irrelevant whether the audience thinks it's a real pedo-dector that has identified Moore as a pedophile?
"The whole point of the joke is that the audience already thinks Moore is a pedo and Cohen is signalling to them that they are right to think that. He thinks that too. All good people think that.
"The purpose of the fake pedo-detector is to reinforce the perception that Moore is indeed a pedo."
Post a Comment