Following in the footsteps of Atrios and Tom Tomorrow, I’ve made this site more “Fair and Balanced” to protest this bullshit :

Fox News Channel has sued liberal humorist Al Franken and the Penguin Group to stop them from using the phrase “fair and balanced” in the title of his upcoming book.

Filed Monday in Manhattan, the trademark infringement lawsuit seeks a court order forcing a Penguin publisher, Dutton books, to rename the book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” It also asks for unspecified damages.

Fox News registered “Fair & Balanced” as a trademark in 1995, the suit says.

Franken’s “intent is clear ? to exploit Fox News’ trademark, confuse the public as to the origins of the book and, accordingly, boost sales of the book,” the suit said.

I think the law says that satire is perfectly legal as long as it doesn’t cofuse the public, but in Fox News’s defense, their viewers really are dumb enough to confuse an obvious parody with an official publication. The Fox News folks have to know that they’re going to lose this case. If they were really concerned about the book’s title, they would have filed this case two months ago when the title was revealed at the L.A. Book Expo (remember Franken and O’Reilly’s shouting match?). Instead they’ve filed the case now so they can likely get a temporary injunction that will end up costing the publisher a lot of money and scare away any other publishers from trying to parody Fox News in the future.