It would be hard to find a current public figure more rigorously exercising his constitutional right to freedom of speech than Glenn Beck. Alas for Beck, the First Amendment may not be his best friend in this instance. You may recall that in early September we reported on the existence of the website www.glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. The Internet meme, "Did Glenn Beck Murder and Rape a Young Girl in 1990?" (answer: no), initially began as a Fark thread and was shortly thereafter developed into its own website, attracting a great deal of attention. It probably goes without saying that Glenn Beck was not thrilled by this and quickly filed a lawsuit against the site's anonymous owners. From our post at the time: (more...)

Last week, we wrote about Glenn Beck 1990, the Fark-spawned project to spread the meme of asking if Beck "raped and murdered a young girl in 1990." The meme mimics Beck's rhetorical tactic of asking loaded questions that are tough to truly refute, even if they're obviously off-base; it's based on this Gilbert Gottfried routine, from the Comedy Central roast of Bob Saget. This site has emerged as its hub. Well, Beck's lawyers heard about it too. Two days after it launched, they went after the site, and its anonymous owner, hard. But was that a good idea? (more...)

The viral posters that compared Obama to the Joker and to Hitler feel tame compared to the latest nasty meme to hit the Internet: insinuating that Glenn Beck raped and killed a young girl in 1990. And the meme may not go away anytime soon: preliminary evidence suggests that Anonymous, the powerful, collective behind such massive, coordinated stunts as attacking the Church of Scientology and flooding YouTube with porn, may be behind it. Update #3, 4:30pm: "Glenn Beck murder" and "Glenn Beck rapist" are now top suggestions when you do a Google search for Glenn Beck. (more...)