While listening to a \u201cconservative\u201d talk radio show recently, the host\u2014who, along with other Iraq War devotees and, what amount to one and the same thing, \u201cAmerican Sniper\u201d worshippers\u2014brought up Jesse Ventura\u2019s lawsuit against the estate of Chris Kyle.\u00a0 \u00a0I was amazed at the dishonesty of his coverage.<\/p>\n
Chris Kyle, \u201cthe American Sniper,\u201d claimed in his book to have knocked out a man named \u201cScruff Face\u201d who supposedly had badmouthed American soldiers fighting in Iraq.\u00a0\u00a0 Interestingly, it wasn\u2019t until he began promoting <\/em>his book that Kyle identified this man as Jesse Ventura.<\/p>\n Ventura has always sworn that Kyle had blatantly lied about the whole incident: Ventura\u2014a former Navy SEAL himself, let\u2019s not forget\u2014insisted that he never made the comments that Kyle imputed to him, and there was never any sort of physical confrontation between them.\u00a0 In fact, Ventura didn\u2019t even know who Kyle was.<\/p>\n Ventura sued Kyle for defamation.<\/p>\n And he won.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Among the wild distortions of my radio host was the claim that the jury was \u201csplit.\u201d\u00a0 Literally, that\u2019s true. But if 80 percent\u2014<\/em>eight of ten\u2014Americans agreed on any <\/em>issue, no one<\/em> would claim that they were \u201csplit\u201d or \u201cdivided.\u201d\u00a0 Everyone <\/em>would chalk this up as one issue around which the nation was unified.<\/p>\n Well, 80 percent\u2014eight of ten\u2014jurors in Ventura\u2019s defamation lawsuit sided with Ventura.<\/p>\n The significance of this can\u2019t be overstated. Among those Constitutional scholars interviewed by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, <\/em>one remarked that Ventura\u2019s case has proven to be \u201cone of the most important First Amendment cases in recent Minnesota history.\u201d\u00a0 The reasons for his judgment are not difficult to grasp.<\/p>\n First, because of First Amendment protections, victory in defamation and libel lawsuits are significantly hard to come by.\u00a0 To prove defamation, a plaintiff must establish that both<\/em> the content of the defendant\u2019s claims are false and <\/em>that he knew <\/em>that what he was saying was false.\u00a0 In other words, plaintiffs must prove that defendants acted with \u201cactual malice.\u201d<\/p>\n Second, since Ventura is a public figure, his hurdle was even tougher than that of most.<\/p>\n Yet he did it: The jury awarded Ventura a little over $1.8 million <\/em>in damages.<\/p>\n Former Navy SEALS, including Terry \u201cMother\u201d Moy, the owner of the bar <\/em>at which this incident was supposed to have occurred, testified on behalf of Ventura\u2019s account, swearing that it never happened.<\/p>\n As Ventura remarked, if this event had really occurred, then word of it would\u2019ve \u201cspread like wildfire\u201d through the SEALS community. However, Ventura is actually guilty of understatement here: Given his high visibility as a public persona, to say nothing of the fact that he was in the town, Coronado, when this incident never occurred precisely in order to address<\/em> a graduating class<\/em> of Navy SEALS <\/em>at the nearby Naval base, something like this, if it happened, would\u2019ve become big news\u2014and quickly.<\/p>\n As Thomas Sowell put it not too long ago, juries \u201cdeal in facts.\u201d\u00a0 And the facts to which this jury had access were not in Chris Kyle\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s another angle to all of this that neither the Kyle worshippers nor the Kyle critics are willing to consider.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s suppose that Kyle did not <\/em>lie, that every syllable he uttered about his alleged confrontation with Ventura was the God\u2019s honest truth.\u00a0 This hardly reflects any better on him.<\/p>\n Think about it: According to the Kyle worshippers, Kyle was over in Iraq fighting for \u201cour freedoms,\u201d including and especially our sacred \u201cfreedom of speech.\u201d This, after all, is the line that his defenders have used against the Michael Moores and Seth Rogens: Kyle fought over there so that they would have the freedom to express themselves here\u2014even when, in doing so, they \u201ctrash talk\u201d Kyle and his comrades-in-arms.<\/p>\n Yet Kyle didn\u2019t respect Ventura\u2019s right to freedom of speech.\u00a0 Rather, once the latter said something that he found offensive, Kyle committed aggravated assault against him.<\/p>\n And then he ran.<\/p>\n Aggravated assault is a crime that carries a prison term of years.\u00a0 <\/em>If Ventura wanted to avenge himself against Kyle, he wouldn\u2019t have sued him for defamation; he would\u2019ve and could\u2019ve pressed criminal charges against Kyle and then <\/em>sued him for injuries.\u00a0\u00a0 After all, won\u2019t the Kyle-worshippers admit that this is just the kind of thing that a publicity hound like Ventura would do?<\/p>\n Nor would Ventura have to worry about keeping quiet to save face.\u00a0 And this brings us to another piece of unflattering commentary on Kyle if things happened as he said: Ventura could\u2019ve taken comfort in knowing, and revealing to the world, that he, a veteran in his 50\u2019s (at the time) was sucker punched by a guy 23 years <\/em>his junior\u2014and over a disagreement on an issue that conflicted the nation.<\/p>\n In any event, Kyle did lie, and he lied in order to profit.<\/p>\n Only blind Kyle-worship\u2014or, to put it more accurately, blind neoconservative ideology\u2014can prevent people from seeing this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While listening to a \u201cconservative\u201d talk radio show recently, the host\u2014who, along with other Iraq War devotees and, what amount to one and the same thing, \u201cAmerican Sniper\u201d worshippers\u2014brought up Jesse Ventura\u2019s lawsuit against the estate of Chris Kyle.\u00a0 \u00a0I was amazed at the dishonesty of his coverage. Chris Kyle, \u201cthe American Sniper,\u201d claimed in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n