Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Glenn Beck Gives Tutorial On How To Get Sued For Defamation

In the days after the Boston Marathon bombings a year ago, Glenn Beck kept telling us that it wasn't just the two Tsarnaev brothers that were involved, no sir!
A Saudi man is suing Glenn Beck for defamation
because Beck said the man had a major role in the
Boston Marathon bombing.
Except the guy didn't. Whoopsie.  

There's always a conspiracy to uncover, at least in Beck's mind, and he figured it out. There was a young man named Abdulrahman Alharbi, 20, a Saudi national, who was at the marathon that day.

Alherbi was injured in the attack. He was also a Saudi, as we said, and the FBI interviewed. I guess if you're Middle Eastern and near a bombing, you're automatically guilty.

Of course, the FBI and other authorities interviewed pretty much everybody who was near that explosion, so it's no surprise they talked with Alharbi.

But, authorities quickly concluded he had nothing to do with the terror attack, other than get injured by it.

But Beck is, or at least was, unconvinced. I guess if the authorities sometimes lie to us, that means they ALWAYS lie to us.

Beck had these things to say about Alharbi. And they are dark. And according to the Washington Post, and an explosion of media outlets today, Beck is the subject of a big defamation suit because Beck's provocative allegations are apparently completely untrue.

Here's what he had to say about Alherbi, in the days after the attack:

"We know who this Saudi national is....We know who this man is and, listen to me carefully, we know he s a very bad, bad, bad man."

He also said the U.S. "tagged" Alharbi as a "proven terrorist." Alharbi was also al Qaeda's "control agent and "money man" for the attacks, at least in Beck's, um, active mind, says the Washington Post

All this I'm sure was fun for Beck, who got to lecture to his rabid followers how smart he was to sniff this guy out, and how the government is covering things up because, oh, who KNOWS?!!?

Of course, all this bullcrap didn't exactly help Alharbi's life any. In his lawsuit, he says that a number of people, and I imagine many of them are Beck's most enthusiastic fans, calling him a child murderer, a terrorist.

I imagine Alharbi worries one of these lunatics might try to kill him.

Look, I'm all for people having the ability to express opinions about others, negative or otherwise. But really, there does need to be some limits. Did Beck know his allegations were false and just kept at it anyway, because it was good for ratings?

Or did he really believe this bullcrap, because he wanted to believe it? Maybe he has some sort of weird Messiah complex, I have no idea.

If you are going to make allegations that are going to wreck somebody's life, especially if you don't make it clear you're just speculating, that you're presenting fiction as fact, you need to be accountable.

So I'm glad Beck is getting sued. I hope Alharbi wins a pile of money.

Of course, if Alharbi does win, Beck will probably just say it's a vast conspiracy against him.

Whatever.

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