James Woods has filed a $10 million lawsuit against a semi-anonymous Twitter user who tweeted that the actor was a cocaine addict. Many people are holding up this case as the perfect example of the Streisand Effect, where more attention is drawn to the accusations by suing rather than ignoring the trolls.
But what if Woods were held to the same standard to which he’s holding this random Twitter user who had a relatively minuscule number of followers? Inspired by Radley Balko’s tweet below, we took a quick peek through James Woods’ Twitter account, which had a rather amazing number of references to Benghazi.
Woods calls people liars, accuses them of being responsible for murder, and has some rather strange things to say about the sexual fantasies of magazine publishers.
That time he called this actress a disgusting liar:
That time Woods implied that Jann Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, had erotic fantasies about the Boston Marathon bomber:
He took it a step further and made some more explicit accusations about Wenner, claiming that he might be pleasuring himself to the bomber’s image:
That time he called Al Sharpton a murderer:
That time he called Hillary Clinton and Jane Fonda treacherous and cowardly:
Now, to be clear, we don’t think James Woods should be sued over any of these tweets. But if the standard for defamation is someone simply saying something stupid and over the top online, James Woods should expect at least half a dozen lawsuits in the coming days.
Chill out and don’t feed the trolls, Mr. Woods. Also, Benghazi.
Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision for Fiji Water/AP Images