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Blake Shelton
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If Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit verdict didn’t get you fired up to discuss defamation laws last week, then perhaps Blake Shelton’s libel suit will.

The Oklahoma native is seeking $2 million in damages from In Touch magazine over an article that claimed Shelton went on a bender and had sex with women in Mexico.

Nolan Clay of NewsOK.com went long on the pending lawsuit Sunday:

“Blake’s friends, colleagues and handlers won’t give up on him — and have all urged him to seek help,” the magazine reported last September.

Shelton said the story is false. He said he was furious when he saw it and complained it almost cost him an endorsement deal with a wine and spirits company.

The magazine’s attorneys are defending the piece — which appears to have been scrubbed from its website — by arguing Shelton cannot be libeled on the topic of heavy boozing owing to the reputation he has made for himself on Twitter, according to Clay’s report:

They have put into evidence almost 50 pages of his tweets about drinking. “Since 2009, he has consistently bragged about being drunk to his over 15 million Twitter followers,” In Touch editorial director David Perel said in a statement in support of the request for a dismissal.

“Mr. Shelton’s Twitter feed is full of his descriptions of drinking early in the day and at work,” Perel said. “Scores of other tweets recall how excessively drunk he often was. … In a YouTube video promoting one of Mr. Shelton’s albums, Mr. Shelton declared that ‘I think of a hangover as a badge of honor.’”

Shelton said in his March 16 statement that he jokes about drinking, but his comments are “part of my schtick with my fans.”

“It is part of my act, part of my performance, but in no way indicates that I have an actual problem with alcohol,” he said.

In sum, the lawsuit’s validity hinges on whether the judge believes Blake Shelton is truly a hard-drinking, wild-man country singer or just pretending to be one in the world of social-media cyber gossip and faux-journalistic Total Celebrity Coverage.

Oddly, Shelton’s claim in the lawsuit is that he’s just joking with many of his booze-focused statements, which makes his litany of interviews and public comments like this one from 2011 seem awkward.

“My heart and soul is being a redneck and drinking and being stupid, you know, that’s what I do!” he told a CNN camera crew at a red-carpet event. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get serious. I’m never going to be political or religious or anything that’s going to get me in more trouble than being wasted all the time already gets me in.”

Ironically, whether Blake Shelton gets drunk and has sex in Mexico should hardly have been “news” in the first place, but for sites like In Touch, TMZ and hundreds of others, it is.

A search of “Blake Shelton” on In Touch shows that the magazine posts about Shelton as often as three or four times per week, and it recently claims to have “broken the news” on a Shelton-Stefani baby using only an anonymous source.

The tactic surely draws clicks and gets advertising dollars, something NonDoc can attest to after we received site-record traffic for posting a relatively tame blurb about Shelton and Gwen Stefani being in Tishomingo this December.

Whether In Touch magazine knowingly published inaccurate information about Shelton’s Mexican excursion would be a matter for the court if the judge rules against the motion to dismiss, but either way the situation highlights the imperfect and obnoxious relationship between many American celebrities and the entertainment media.

On the one hand, performers like Shelton owe much of their money and fame to the digital whirlpool that pumps their name/brand to millions of Americans on a daily basis. But on the other, a celebrity can rarely maintain control of narratives in the media wash cycle.

As a result, Blake Shelton runs the risk of his private trips south of the border being reported on — however accurately — by entities concerned only with generating enticing headlines about celebrities. He stands well within his rights to sue for libel if the post’s details were fabricated, but the move forces him to prove that he didn’t get drunk and laid on vacation.

And that hardly makes a for good country song.

Maybe he should have recalled how Billy Joe Shaver and the ghost of Waylon Jennings tried to warn us: “There ain’t no God in Mexico” anyhow.

Things we saw (and heard)

How Obama set a trap for Raul Castro — Politico.com

Oklahoma City VA gets new director after years in transition — Stripes.com

This student took chilling photos to show what anxiety feels like — Buzzfeed.com

OKCPS teacher: ‘I do feel kind of worried’ — KOCO.com

DHS cuts affect vital public school position — KFOR.com

Quotes to note

The same US military that routinely assures us of the pinpoint accuracy of its cruise missiles, each of which cost $1.4 million, and whose 2017 budget request will include $71 billion for “military research,” says it simply can’t drop food within a mile of its target—not without spending more money than can be justified by merely saving human lives.

FAIR.org, on why humanitarian efforts to drop food to starving refugees have failed in Syria, 3/25/16

Remember that for you, life in Oklahoma City may be delightful. But for the single mom working three jobs just to afford daycare, for the overworked and underpaid corrections officer, for the teenager who just found out she’s pregnant, and for the third grader who hasn’t eaten dinner in two days, life in Oklahoma is much different.

— Madi Alexander on Medium.com, 3/24/16

It just doesn’t seem right that thousands of patriotic Republican good guys should be left totally unprotected by whatever bad guys might wish to do them harm. I mean forgodsake people, ISIS could show up to take out everybody in and around that building and they’d be sitting ducks. Sitting ducks, I tell you!

— a blogger for Hyperrationalist.com, who allegedly began a petition to allow open carry at the Republican convention in Cleveland, 3/24/16

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