Sometimes I think there should be some sort of process where if someone makes spurious legal threats they should be forced to follow through with it, with appropriate consequences. Totally impractical of course but this sort of thing is really shitty, this particular case is funny of course but it happens every day, often to people who can’t afford lawyers so even a completely meaningless threat can be crushing. There ought to be consequences and they ought to be easy to bring.
The thing is,
Well, it’s politics. It’s “post-truth” embodied. Facts don’t matter, it’s obviously never going to see a courtroom; what matters is that the message gets out.
It’s little different from the likes of the Daily Mail running headlines like “DO KIT-KATS CAUSE LEPROSY?” The answer is blatantly “no” but we’re suddenly thrust into this Jamie and the Magic Torch-esque Cuckoo Land where Nestlé find themselves having to defend themselves and the very people targeted by this misinformation are shouting “well, can you prove they don’t?”
The fact that Temu Thatcher has called for a retraction is sufficient evidence for the hard of thinking to believe that the accusations are invalid, because that’s what they wanted to believe anyway. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice…
