If you happened to be paying attention to the Facebook feed of your MeeMaw or that “friend” from high school who doesn’t quite get the concept of internet this week, you may have seen the outrageous story about Aretha Franklin getting in an actual fight with Patti LaBelle.
Of course these soul sisters didn’t come to blows and of course it was satire but there was a whole bunch of folks who chose to believe it any old how and shared the post like crazy.
Apparently the Queen of Soul felt a little dis-R-E-S-P-E-C-Ted by this and is now suing the site responsible for the silliness, News Nerd, for $10 million dollars! Via her publicist Franklin said, “The stories were not presented as satire or humor. It was presented as a serious news story intended to depict me in a slanderous and derogatory way — defamation of character.”
A quick look-see of NewsNerd reveals multiple absurd stories and the following disclaimer (which appears on every page):
The stories posted on TheNewsNerd are for entertainment purposes only. The stories may mimic articles found in the headlines, but rest assured they are purely satirical.
In the obviously fictional story it’s LaBelle who got the best of Franklin so maybe she’s just upset that she fake lost?
I’m no lawyer – but I’m assuming that Aretha doesn’t have any ground to stand on here legally. I mean, if so you could kiss The Onion goodbye and what fun would Facebook be if you didn’t have at least one tricked person a day getting corrected over and over and over again about how the story they shared was not real?
