Take Back The Media On The Media and Their Lawsuit

As many of you may know, I co-founded the web site Take Back The Media with Mike Stinson and Julie Sigwart in December of last year. We saw a void - a lack of calling the American Media on its acquiescence/complicity in pushing a hard-right agenda in return for the promise of relaxed FCC ownership rules, and we filled that void.

We feel that the media in this country is - either through ignorance, incompetence or malevolence - systematically silencing and/or marginalizing voices of dissent in this country. Look back at the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and you'll see a path littered with the bodies of dissenters of many different types. You've got informed insiders (Scott Ritter), entertainers with social conscience (Sean Penn, Jeanane Garafalo, Martin Sheen), recording artists who speak their minds (Dixie Chicks, Madonna), entire countries and cultures (France, Germany, 'Old Europe') and patriotic Americans with dissenting points of view (John Kerry). All spoke out aganist the occupation of Iraq, all had one manner or another of hammer fall on them.

Those who spoke out became fodder for shrieking heads on cable TV and hate radio. On a nightly basis, partisan hacks like Joe Scarborough and Bill O'Reilly vented their outrage that there were those in this country who didn't fall on their knees and pledge life-long fealty to an ex-drunk deserter who was placed in position to wage war on the world by a group of partisans in black robes. And talk radio, unbelievably, was even worse.

The Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs and Michael Savages of the world went even further, calling dissenters unpatriotic and Un-American. 'Pro-troop rallies' (which consisted mainly of complaining about those who dared criticize the government) were assembled by Clear Channel Communications, and there were calls from the most hateful fringe to try and imprison dissenters under the Sedition Act (never mind that it was repealed). Pretty perverse - but the festering sewer known as right-wing talk radio somehow found a way to pervert the situation even further.

While Limbaugh and Beck kept the rabble-rousing on a general level, Michael 'Michael Savage' Weiner took things to an absurdly personal level. Weiner's response to a boycott by GLAAD led him to spend hours on his marginally-rated droolfest threatening those who would try to boycott him. In the rush to war, Weiner somehow made the situation all about him, and made threats to go after those who criticized him and make them pay. A Goliath in search of a David, he railed against GLAAD - and then trained his sites on an entirely different target.

Weiner filed suit against 3 small web sites - SavageStupidity.com, MichaelSavageSucks.com, and Take Back The Media.

There are many sites and organizations - the largest among them the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) - who have been much more aggressive in their actions against Weiner than any of the sites that were sued. GLAAD actually called for a boycott of Weiner's advertisers, and they have a full archive of Weiner's quotes and sound bites (one of the main contentions of the lawsuit) on their site. The difference between GLAAD and TBTM is this - GLAAD has the resources to mount a vigorous defense against a harassment suit such as this without bankrupting themselves, and Weiner is quite simply afraid to try and attack someone who might actually be able to fight back.

This frivolous lawsuit is only one rung on the food chain for Weiner, and if he silences us, he'll have a precedent with which to go after bigger sites, more well-known commentators, bigger organizations - in short, anyone he feels like going after. In typical bully fashion, he avoids picking a fight with someone his own size, opting instead to pick on sites that would run their bank accounts dry in their own defense.