I shouldn't be surprised...

but for some reason, I am. I guess I just never realized that being offended was an actionable offence.

Knoxville native Terri Carlin filed a proposed class action lawsuit in a U.S. District Court on Wednesday, charging the accused with causing her and "millions of others" to "suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury." The suit reportedly seeks billions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages.

You know, if this thing actually goes anywhere, some of us liberals may want to get together, higher a lawyer, and see if we can't sue, say, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and the rest of the gang. Surely, they've caused millions to suffer outrage, anger and serious injury in the process of prosecuting their little war.

You know, I have no idea what kind of 'serious injury' unexpectedly seeing a naked breast on TV can cause - unless you were walking through a room at the time and were so stunned by the sight that you tripped and fell or something - but if seeing Janet's boob causes 'serious injury' and makes for a suing offense, then the nearly 600 American deaths so far in Iraq (plus the thousands of soldiers who have been injured, and all of the dead or injured Iraqis) should easily qualify.

Even better - how about we sue Ralph Nader for his role in helping get Bush elected in the first place? I mean, were it not for his "so what if I can't win?" candidacy, Gore might actually have gotten enough electoral votes to beat Bush in a few more states and think of all the outrage, anger and embarrassment THAT would have saved our country.

Or, if we want to stick to media and "entertainment" figures (since trying to sue the President could get rather messy), surely folks like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Rielly have caused at least as much outrage and anger as Janet and Justin. I'm pretty sure they've had - at times - a negative impact on my blood pressure.

I could go on, but you get the picture. If we're going to start suing over everything that upsets us or makes us feel angry or embarrassed, the courts won't have time to actually deal with the suits where people have REAL injuries and REAL issues that are truly worthy of the courts time. We already have more than enough frivolous suits as it is, and this kind of litigious grandstanding isn't going to help matters. If you really can't handle seeing a momentary medium-distance shot of a naked-but-decorated breast, you probably shouldn't be watching TV in the first place.

Posted by thorswitch at February 6, 2004 02:44 PM | TrackBack