Couldn’t Help But Notice (092507)

I am told from time to time that MoveOn is not really a radical organization.

Wrong. MoveOn is run by people whose first, and second, and third instincts, if given any opening, are to silence opponents. They are petty tyrants in training.

You doubt? Consider how many people had to be involved in the decisions leading to this:

MoveOn.org’s thin skin

(MoveOn) has been sending out cease-and-desist letters to CafePress, a website that lets people offer custom-designed t-shirts, coffee mugs and the like for sale. Last week it demanded that the site remove eight (parody) items, arguing that they violated MoveOn’s merchandising trademarks.

Trademark law doesn’t confer monopoly rights over all uses of a registered phrase or symbol, however, and it wasn’t created simply to protect the trademark owner’s interests. Instead, it’s designed to protect consumers against being misled or confused about brands.

….. To its credit, CafePress refused to take down five bumper stickers ….. “While we understand that negative commentary is unsavory, our shopkeepers’ parodies of the MoveOn.org trademark are permissible here, especially when one considers the First Amendment implications raised by the social and political importance of your organization, the policies it advocates, and the countervailing messages conveyed by the parodies,” wrote Daniel Pontes of CafePress to Carrie Olson, MoveOn’s chief operating officer. Olson had been the one requesting the takedown.

MoveOn is not run by a bunch of legal newbies. They know what fair use is, but went after the CafePress vendor anyway in the name of intimidation, pure and simple. And they got their way, sort of; the vendor involved is “retooling,” and says, “….. lest ‘the group that shall not be named’ think this is a right-wing conspiracy, it isn’t. I’m a Democrat. Or, I will be until tomorrow.”

Closer to the truth: MoveOn is International ANSWER with a very thin veneer of civility that washes away at the slightest provocation.

Glenn Reynolds: “They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected simple Internet parodies would be ruthlessly suppressed by a political commissariat. And they were right!”

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When Iraq vet Paul Hackett seemed about to upset Jean Schmidt in August 2005 in Ohio’s heavily GOP Second Congressional District, and almost did, it was somehow seen as a referendum indicating flagging support for the Iraq War — even though Hackett got as close as he did by pretending to be a Bush-supporting war hawk in his local TV ads, while cursing the president and calling him a chickenhawk for the benefit of Old Media.

So if Republican Jim Ogonowski (HT Patrick Ruffini), a 28-year military vet whose brother John was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 on 9/11, gets close to, or even upsets, Niki Tsongas on October 16th in Massachusetts’ 5th District, it will be seen as a referendum of support for General Petraeus and continuing on his recommended course ….. Right?

Someone’s definitely nervous ….. and unspeakably petty.

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Noonan on Greenspan. What she said.

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Follow this:

• Hillary now says that Hillarycare II won’t cover illegal aliens.
• But she has previously said that she wants universal health care that covers all 47 million of those who are uninsured.
• That 47 million figure includes a very large number of non-citizens (9.6 million in 2005, according to this post at Not Taking Sides that looked at the Census Bureau report; others believe the correct figure is between 12-20 million).
• The first two items above cannot co-exist.