To quote Bob Dylan: “There ought to be a law against you comin’ around…’Cause something is happening and you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?”
Actually, at this point, Mr. Jones has a darn good idea what’s happening. He’s being gutted like a fish.
The infamous shock jock of InfoWars, who has long reaped big bucks by destroying the lives of innocent private citizens (most notably, the grieving Sandy Hook parents) is being held accountable this week in a court of law. Finally – finally! – a jury is drawing a line that separates protected free speech from lie-strewn hate speech. Finally, a jury has signaled that there should be financial consequences for serial liars who rape reality in the pursuit of profit. Punitive damages were assessed late today. Jones’ total payout, to one Sandy Hook family, is a robust $49.1 million.
Granted, the sideshows at the Texas trial were priceless – especially the revelation this week that Jones’ cellphone texts and emails had been accidentally sent to the suing parents’ lawyers, thus demonstrating that he has been lying while under oath (falsely insisting that he never sent messages about Sandy Hook, and that “I never used email”), and gifting new potential evidence to Jan. 6 investigators. Heck, the expression on Jones’ face at the precise moment when he learned in court about his phone (see photo above) was more delicious than a chocolate sundae with cherry on top.
But let’s stay focused on what matters most in this historic defamation case:
Imagine that you were a parent whose child was slaughtered in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, and that, while you were beginning to grieve from the bottom of your heart, you learned that Alex Jones was on the air telling his fans: “They staged Sandy Hook. The evidence is overwhelming.” And that he produced segments with titles like “Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed.” And that, three years after the shootings, he was still at it: “Sandy Hook is synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view, manufactured…They clearly used actors.” And imagine that, as a result of his lies (supposedly the “actors” were hired to fake grief and thereby advance the cause of gun control), his nitwit listeners were thus inspired to harassed, stalk, and threaten you.
All of which prompts the key question: Should a grease stain like Jones be allowed to go scot free for yelling the equivalent of fire in a crowded theatre? Is that supposed to be blessed as “free speech”? Or was the Sandy Hook parents’ lawyer correct this week when he contended that even though “speech is free,” sometimes there are “lies you have to pay for”? The jury has already decided in the affirmative; it has ordered Jones to pay the suing parents, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, $4.1 million in compensatory damages.
I don’t envy the jury’s task of determining the monetary worth of the parents’ suffering. But it had to be done, because the trial was all about damage assessment. His guilt was a given.
Jones had already admitted, under lawsuit pressure in 2019, that Sandy Hook was a genuine event; on the witness stand the other day, he admitted again that Sandy Hook was “100 percent real.” Indeed, the judges in this case and two other pending cases have already found Jones guilty by default, because he refused to participate in the lawsuits’ discovery process and refused to disclose his financial info. In effect, he was defying the legitimacy of the courts. Even during this trial, InfoWars aired a segment claiming without evidence that the judge was “working with pedophiles.”
Serial liars, merchants of reality distortion, are not really capable of reforming themselves. This week he kept lying on the witness stand, claiming for instance that he couldn’t give the parents much money because he was “broke.” (His companies have filed for bankruptcy, but he himself is not “broke.” Reportedly, he and his family have millions in shell entities.) Yes, Jones has been humiliated during this defamation trial, but you still have to wonder whether it’s possible to curb him and all the other mad dogs that are loose in the national junkyard. Have we passed the point where most Americans can even agree on what constitutes a shared reality?
The judge in this trial, Maya Guerra Gamble, even felt compelled to school Jones on what was real and what was not. Clearly fed up with his lies, she told him: “You must tell the truth when you testify. This is not your show…You are under oath. That means things must actually be true when you say them…Do you understand what I have said? Yes or no, do you understand what I have said?”
Jones replied: “I believed what I said was true.”
Judge Gamble: “You believe everything you say is true, but it isn’t. Just because you claim something is true doesn’t make it true. It does not protect you…You can only testify about things that are true.”
But aggrieved parent Scarlett Lewis said it best when she addressed Jones during the trial: “Having a six-year-old son shot in his forehead in his classroom is unbearable…And then to have someone on top of that perpetuate a lie that it was a hoax, that it didn’t happen, that it was a false flag, that I was an actress – you think I’m an actress?…And all of the damage that you caused, the fear that you have put people in, I think that there has to be accountability for that…It seems so incredible to me that we have to implore you – not just implore you, punish you – to get you to stop lying…Do you have empathy?”
Well. We know the answer to that one. But at least we can take comfort in knowing that Alex Jones’ free ride is finally over. To quote lyrics from Prince, “Life is just a party and parties weren’t meant to last.”