Once more, Fox News is showing us what a bunch of swell defenders of a free press they are.

This time, they decided to do it by suing Al Franken (of Saturday Night Live fame) over his new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.'They sought an injunction against the book because - get this - they've trademarked the phrase "Fair and Balanced," and Franken uses it in the book's title. And they also sought unspecified damages for the book, itself.

Maybe Fox News had a case, and maybe they didn't: I guess it depends on how you look at trademark law. But less than three days after a Federal Judge refused to put an injunction against the book, calling it "wholly without merit," Fox dropped the lawsuit altogether - a move that Franken's lawyer described as "welcome, if overdue."

What was this, anyway? "We Suppress, You Support"? Trademarks are worth protecting, but this still has to be one of the most bone-headed moves we've
gotten out of Fox News for a while. It's not nearly as bad as their hiring Geraldo Rivera - much less sending him to Afghanistan and letting him carry a gun - but it comes awfully close.

Consider the following:

* Fox News sues Al Franken, and let's say that they lost. This then would have become a win-win situation for Franken. The curiosity factor for the book would be raised up by the legal brouhaha, which means that people who might not otherwise be inclined to buy the book would buy it just to see what the fuss is all about. This means that more books would be sold, and whatever Franken has to say would get a wider audience. It also means that, in the end, Fox News would end up looking like a bunch of evil poopheads for trying to stop the book.

* But what if they sued Al Franken, and Fox News actually won? What would they really get out of it, other than a stoppage, a change of title and unspecified damages? Well, the publisher would have to change the title of the book, which could mean that a whole metric ton of these books would have to be scrapped. But they could always print more, adding in a brand new prologue about how "this was the book they didn't want you to read." So - just like above - the curiosity factor kicks in, more books are sold, and Fox News still looks like a bunch of evil poopheads. It's a lose-win situation, but the message still gets out, and money is still made.

* There's also the worst-case scenario to consider: that's where the suit goes forward, Fox News wins, and Al Franken gets told that he has to pony up the cash for a fixed reprinting of the book. If he couldn't, or wouldn't, then the existing books would get pulped, and he'd just have to find a new publisher in year or so. (This is the same thing that almost happened to Michael Moore's Stupid White Men, by the way.)

That looks pretty bad, but remember what happened to Stupid White Men: Moore fought his own publishers, courtesy of a lot of very loud, public support, and it was published, anyway. Maybe Franken's book won't be able to be printed as is, but having a horde of screaming librarians descend on the book's publisher could persuade them to let him have a revised say courtesy of the publisher's own pocketbook. And, as with the other examples, the curiosity factor kicks in, more books are sold, and Fox News still really looks like a bunch of evil poopheads.

In other words, even if Fox News won, they'd still have ended up losing. Which leads one to wonder exactly what was going through Fox's Legal Department's heads when this suit was conjured up? Is protecting the all-too-common phrase "Fair and Balanced" so important that they were willing to dance to a tune that made no one look good?

There's also the way in which the suit, itself, was written. According to a report on it, the complaint refered to Franken as "increasingly unfunny" and a "parasite. " It went on to point out that he is "neither a journalist nor a television news personality. He is not a well-respected voice in American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable. His views lack any serious depth or insight."

It makes for amusing reading, but I have to wonder what Judge Chin was thinking. Was he really considering the merits of the case, or was nothing but the thought "are they employing crackheads at Fox?" going through his head? This is a simple matter of trademark infringement, not a custody dispute: an invective-smeared dossier on Franken's credentials, behavior and comportment was neither necessary nor needed, now was it?

A possible clue to the motivation behind this suit can be found elsewhere in the complaint. They also mentioned that Franken was "either intoxicated or deranged" while he "attacked" Bill O'Reilly earlier this year. Did someone in the department, feeling sorry for poor old Bill, conjure this up as some weird sort of revenge? Or was it just some junior intern, bucking for a date with Anne Coulter, who decided to grease some wheels and go wild?

I can almost see this person, sitting up late in the legal department, sniffing toner and giggling hysterically as he types this up. And then the suit gets dropped off at the courthouse, and no one's laughing anymore...

Yes, that's probably far-fetched. No doubt they all knew what they were doing, even if they really didn't. But saying this really looks bad for Fox News is like saying Brit Hume needs some nitrous oxide.

And the sad part is that they didn't need to do anything like this. They could have just let it ride, figuring that the "news" side of the operation could handle the negative publicity in their own, ineffable way - namely, calling their detractors a bunch of liberal traitors and siccing the likes of Bill O'Reilly on them. And if Franken's new book is anything like the previous one I read - "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" - then that strategy would have been so much more effective.

But no, we can't expect anything approaching sense or sensibility from Fox News... just "Fair and Balanced" reporting.

"It's time to return Al Franken to the obscurity that he's normally accustomed to." - A spokesperson for Fox News, totally missing the irony