Not everyone bases their judgement of Americans on the actions of their overpaid, untalented entertainers. Some, for instance, base their judgement on the actions of their overpaid, untalented President, but he has not been sued for cultivating the impression that Americans are either complete idiots or arrogant imperialists. And there are others, like me, who treat people as individuals and distinct from their incompetent government or useless celebrities.
They may *feel* that their reputations have been defamed, but this is not the test; the test is whether a reasonable person, relying on the defamatory material, would think less of the plaintiffs. This is clearly not the case, for the above reasons.
(Although one might argue that, as a direct and proximate result of the incident, an individual was forced to file a lawsuit, which caused me to believe that they were a complete idiot, which conclusion I might not have reached had the incident not taken place and the lawsuit not been filed.)
Maybe I can file a countersuit because I have been defamed by the implicit allegation that non-Americans are all shallow people who base their judgements of individual Americans on what they see on TV. |
