Ars Technica
When someone registers a domain like glennbeck rapedand murderedayounggirl in1990.com, they probably expect to hear from Glenn Beck‘s lawyers. In this case, it took two days. The site’s anonymous operator tells Ars that the whole thing is satire–but that may not be enough to avoid charges of defamation.
The controversy started a week ago in the Fark forums, where someone picked up on an old Gilbert Gottfried roast of the “comedian” (scare quotes fully intended) Bob Saget. During the roast, Gottfried repeatedly said (watch the video) that Saget had “not raped and killed a girl in 1990.” The Fark forums took the joke about the power of insinuation and applied it to right-wing talk show host Glenn “Obama is a racist” Beck.
One of the Fark readers then took the forum meme to the next level, registering a domain name and launching a web site in order to make a point about talking head TV demagoguery.
The site went up on September 1 and had a huge spike of initial interest–it served more than 120,000 page loads in the first 24 hours. More…