I’m Tired Of Having To Be A “Reasonable Person”
Once again, a right-wing media figure is using the “You thought I was being serious?” defense after their words landed them in legal trouble.
One of the lawyers on former President Donald Trump’s legal team that was tasked with overturning the election results of the 2020 presidential election, Sidney Powell was sued by Dominion Voting Systems in January. The voting systems company sued Powell for defamation after she made outrageous claims of fraud and attempted to cast doubt on the results by falsely tying the company to the late Hugo Chavez and communist Venezuela, among others.
In a new court filing by Powell’s defense lawyers, they claim that statements made about Dominion and the election were simply descriptions of “the facts on which she based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump.”
They went on to say “that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.”
Basically, listen to what I say and believe it except that I might not actually mean it. The words I tell you are facts as I see them, but are opinions that you shouldn’t pay attention to.
This move is straight out of the conservative playbook. It’s the political equivalent of a bully pulling down someone’s pants in front of a crowd and yelling “It’s a joke, bro!” when people get mad at them.
We can look at Fox News’ Tucker Carlson for further examples.
In September of 2020, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York dismissed a slander suit against Carlson brought by Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had an affair with Trump and was paid off to keep quiet. Carlson attacked her and Stormy Daniels, another woman making the same claims of being paid hush money, saying that they had tried to extort Trump by threatening “to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money.”
U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, said in her opinion that Carlson’s statements are not “actual facts” and are instead “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” She continued, “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.”
“It’s just a joke, bro. Get a sense of humor.”
How about Mr. “Gay Frogs” himself, Alex Jones? This even-poorer man’s Rush Limbaugh wannabe has made a career of making outlandish claims that appear to borderline some form of psychosis to an outside observer.
From saying that the government is adding chemicals to the water supply to turn people and frogs into homosexuals to promoting the wild conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and other powerful figures were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a D.C. pizzeria, Jones has made said things that simply leave one shaking their head.
Perhaps his most despicable claim was that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that left 26 dead, including 20 children, was staged by “crisis actors” to try and restrict gun rights. His claims led to him being sued by eight families of children killed in the shooting. One suit specifically centered around Jones’ statements about an interview that Veronique De La Rosa, mother of six-year old victim Noah, had with Anderson Cooper on CNN.
Jones claimed the interview was fake and that green screens were used to give the appearance that De La Rosa was actually in Newtown, Connecticut. Jones’ evidence was that “when [Cooper] turns, his nose disappears repeatedly because the green screen isn’t set right.”
Care to take a guess at what Jones’ defense was in the suit?
“No reasonable reader or listener would interpret Mr. Jones’ statements regarding the possibility of a ‘blue-screen’ being used as a verifiably false statement of fact, and even if it is verifiable as false, the entire context in which it was made discloses that the statements are mere opinions ‘masquerading as a fact.’”
There’s that phrase again. “No reasonable” person, reader, viewer, listener, or whatever would believe what these people are saying.
“It’s just a joke, bro. Stop being so sensitive.”
Well, I’m tired of being reasonable. When did it become the population’s job to figure out what’s real and what’s not? When did people stop thinking for themselves in the most basic of ways and allow themselves to be fed obvious mistruths? Has all semblance of critical thinking been surgically removed from the average person?
It feels like standing in the riptide of an ocean of misinformation. The wild claims and lies try to pull me out into the deep water and drown me as I, a reasonable person, have to stand in waist-high water and stay firmly planted.
There may come a time when I’ve had enough and just get out of the water, but until then I’ll just be here, watching others getting pulled under the surface and hoping they are smart enough and strong enough to pull themselves out of the rip.
