Finally, a pretense for writing about American Idol. O’Reilly had on a lawyer who argued that Fox may have had a cause of action against Howard Stern and VoteForTheWorse.com, because they suggest that people vote for Sanjaya precisely because he is bad. Stern allegedly is doing so to undermine Idol’s credibility. (pause). So the lawyer argues that Fox can use Stern for, I don’t know, I think she said ‘intentional interference with malicious intent.’ She also sugested that the jilted contestants might have an action for Stern for, I don’t know, contributory unjust enrichment, because Sanjaya received the spot that was rightfully their’s.
I looked at the American Idol voting FAQs. They don’t tell you who to vote for. The one rule is that you can’t use ‘power dialing.’ So Stern doesn’t seem to be encouraging anyone to breach a contract with Idol (having never voted on Idol, I don’t know if the voter enters into another contract that might have additional provisions).
Here’s an example of lawful speech: Based on that clip, Danielle Aidala may not have the surest grasp of the treatment of commercial speech and maybe you should think twice before retaining her or providing a television network as a platform for her views (O’Reilly, to his credit, seemed skeptical of her argument).
HT AboveTheLaw (including speculation as to why Ms Aidala is on TV).