 PRESS RELEASE: Public Citizen to defend SavageStupidity.com co-founders against $500,000 lawsuit by Michael SavageJune 3rd, 2003SANTA CRUZ, CA - SavageStupidity.com's co-founders, Thomas and Gunilla Leavitt, announced today that Public Citizen, a nationally prominent non-profit public interest law firm, has agreed to defend them from a lawsuit filed by Talk Radio Network, Inc. TRN syndicates "The Savage Nation", a nationally broadcast radio talk show hosted by the infamous Michael Savage (née Weiner). "The Weiner has demonstrated his contempt for free speech by filing this lawsuit, and we intend to dispute it vigorously," said Thomas and Gunilla. SavageStupidity.com will also be represented by David Bradford, a partner specializing in complex litigation at the prestigious Chicago-based national law firm of Jenner & Block, who will act as local counsel in the case. On May 12th TRN filed a federal lawsuit asking for $500,000 in damages due to "lost advertising and business opportunities", in an attempt to permanently shut down three web sites containing detailed criticism of Michael Savage and encouraging consumer boycotts of advertisers on his radio and television shows. Filed in a Northern Illinois court, the suit claims that Culligan International Company canceled a contract for advertising on "The Savage Nation" worth more than $100,000 after receiving "false and malicious" email from the web site owners and their readers. Others named in the lawsuit are a John Doe (responsible for michaelsavagesucks.com), and Julie Sigwart, owner of Take Back the Media (takebackthemedia.com), both of whom also vigorously dispute the merits of TRN's claims. "We are extraordinarily pleased to have two such prestigious firms defending us. Public Citizen has a strong history of successfully defending web site owners like ourselves against meritless attempts to stifle free speech, and we are confident they will prevail in our case as well. TRN's claims are without substance - this lawsuit is clearly an attempt to silence a rapidly rising flood of criticism from the grassroots that is driving all sensible advertisers away from Savage's show," said Thomas Leavitt, co-founder and content editor for SavageStupidity.com. "No sane company wants to be associated with the stream of racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and generally hateful and obnoxious comments broadcast daily on 'The Savage Nation'. Intimating that Elizabeth Smart is a slut, calling gay pride marchers 'the brownshirts of the modern age', and ranting that 'Hispanics breed like rabbits' place Michael Weiner far outside the mainstream of American political discourse. Advertisers are leaving in droves on their own - we're just helping the process along by empowering people with documented and referenceable commentary they can use to effectively communicate their pre-existing concerns to Savage's advertisers. Savagestupidity.com is freedom of speech in action, as American as Apple Pie, and we fully expect the courts to recognize that." Talk Radio Networks, Inc. has also filed a domain name dispute complaint with the National Arbitration Forum attempting to seize the savagestupidity.com domain name, based on unfounded claims that it is "confusingly similar" to michaelsavage.com and violates the as yet to be approved "Michael Savage" trademark. SavageStupidity.com's co-founders have chosen to answer this on their own, filing a response on May 26th, 2003. Savage filed a similar claim against michaelsavagesucks.com, whose owner responded on May 20th, 2003. Both sites expect to prevail, but are prepared to pursue further courses of action should the corporate-biased Uniform Dispute Resolution Process fail to produce a satisfactory result. SavageStupidity.com and michaelsavagesucks.com were the lone voices documenting Savage's hate-filled commentaries until earlier this year, when MSNBC announced plans to broadcast a talk show hosted by Michael Savage on Saturday afternoons, after dropping veteran liberal-leaning talk show host Phil Donahue from its lineup. Several national organizations, including the Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), the National Organization for Women (NOW), and GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), responded by launching extensive publicity efforts aimed at encouraging MSNBC to reconsider its decision to offer Savage's hateful rants a televised forum, and documenting his long history of problematic remarks. "We find it curious that Savage's lawsuit does not mention any of these nationally prominent organizations, despite their much greater ability to generate negative publicity and the fact that at least one of them, GLAAD, maintains an extensive repository of Savage-related information on their web site, including audio/visual excerpts," said Thomas. "This is obviously another case of a media giant picking on the little guy/gal, in an attempt to set an unfortunate precedent that would harm free speech on the Internet and elsewhere. We are pleased that Public Citizen and David Bradford recognized the importance of this case by agreeing to defend us. The flood of supportive and helpful email that we've received from visitors to the web site indicates that they are not alone in this recognition, and has been very much appreciated." Full documentation of both the lawsuit and the domain dispute is available through the SavageStupidity.com website at http://www.savagestupidity.com/ in the sections on the home page labeled "Lawsuit" and "Domain Name Dispute". Other Resources:
Public Citizen website:
Jenner & Block website... "A lawyer fights to preserve the blood-bought rights of our people in defense of the poor. -Justice Floyd E. Thompson":
David J. Bradford:
Culligan Response to email from MichaelSavageSucks.com (received by SavageStupidity.com's editor after the lawsuit was served):
GLAAD Archive on Savage (includes audio/visual samples and media coverage of Savage controversy):
FAIR News Release on Savage's hiring by MSNBC "GE, Microsoft Bring Bigotry to Life":
Bob Lonsderry "ASK MICHAEL SAVAGE TO APOLOGIZE" (re: comments about Elizabeth Smart): About Thomas and Gunilla Leavitt Husband and wife, writer and designer, Thomas and Gunilla have found that their skills complement each other. "Gunilla is a very visual person, but she's helpless when faced with the task of filling an empty page with text. I, on the other hand, am happy pounding a keyboard till my fingers bleed - nothing pleases me more than to make rhetorical mincemeat of ludicrous public figures like Michael Weiner," said Thomas. "Before I met Gunilla, however, it would have never occurred to me to create a site like SavageStupidity.com (and indeed, I never did), because I simply lack the design skills to create anything even remotely professional, and the high quality look and feel of the sites we've created is very important to me. I'm as helpless before a graphic design program as Gunilla is before a text editor." "My job is to make things look pretty. Before I met Thomas, I lost a lot of business because my clients just were not up to the task of creating original content to populate my designs - with him, I'm able to offer both design AND copy writing, which makes my clients ecstatic. It works the same way with the advocacy media web sites we create together - Thomas comes up with the concept, I design it and create templates, and he takes it from there," said Gunilla. "The look and feel are all me, the content and words are all him, which is the way I like it." SavageStupidity.com was the first advocacy media web site Thomas and Gunilla created together - since then, they've collaborated on a number of other projects, including BuyFrenchNow.com, and ISwitched.org (which profiles activists who've switched to the Green Party and documents why they made the switch), as well as numerous web site designs and revamps for local organizations Thomas and Gunilla work with, and Thomas' City Council campaign site at http://www.thomasleavitt.org/cc/. About SavageStupidity.com Founded in May of 2002, SavageStupidity.com's goal is to raise awareness about Michael Savage's hateful diatribes and the attitudes they foster and support among his listener audience. To that end, it has generated over 500,000 page views, including over 130,000 in May of 2003 alone, published a wide selection of "hate mail" from Savage supporters demonstrating Savage's noxious influence, and been cited in a number of media and activist articles as one of the primary sources for information on Savage and "The Savage Nation".
A copy of this release in HTML format is available at http://www.savagestupidity.com/pr-06-03-2003-publiccitizen.html
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