aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Will Tom sue?

A couple weeks ago South Park had fun with Tom & John & R in an episode (clip) that ended with Stan shouting, ”So sue me” and a credit roll peopled only with John and Jane Smiths. For good reason?

Could Cruise successfully sue “South Park”? And more broadly, should he continue his campaign of directly combating the claim that he’s homosexual, or rethink the ethics of bringing such lawsuits?

The relevant “South Park” episode—entitled “Trapped in the Closet”—self-consciously skirts the outermost edges of the First Amendment’s protection for parody. A court would probably deem it constitutionally protected, but only barely.

Defamation requires a “statement of fact”—and for this reason, most parody, because of its fictional nature, falls outside defamation law by definition. But this is the rare parody that, fairly read, does make a statement of fact.

In the episode, the animated version of Cruise literally goes into a closet, and won’t come out. Other characters beg him to “come out of the closet,” including the animated version of his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman. The Kidman character promises Cruise that if he comes out of the closet, neither she nor “Katie” will judge him. But the Cruise character claims he isn’t “in the closet,” even though he plainly is.

Read on, particularly for the question of whether or not courts should stop deeming claims of homosexuality defamatory. (She thinks so.) Tom can afford to loosen up. He should take a lesson from Elijah.

For the record, I’m not one of those who has ever believed the rumor.

Via SoVo Wire.