Wizbang found this delightful article in Newsday yesterday, in which New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer cracked down on a local radio station (to the tune of $240,000) for a "smackfest" promotion:
ALBANY, N.Y. -- A New York City radio station has agreed to stop its "Smackfest" promotion, in which women slap each other for prizes, under a $240,000 settlement announced Monday, said state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
Spitzer and the state Athletic Commission stated that the hip-hop and rhythm and blues station held 24 "Smackfest" contests from April 2004 to January 2005. Young women took turns "violently slapping" each other for concert tickets and as much as $5,000 in cash, Spitzer said. Images of the slapping then ran on the station's Web site.
"This agreement should be a wake up call to all those in the entertainment industry who think outrageousness is a clever marketing strategy," Spitzer said. "The law establishes set boundaries that cannot be crossed to protect our community's health and safety."
Spitzer investigated the case as a potential violation of state law regarding the promotion of a combative sport.
The State Athletic Commission, are you following this? In order to punish this radio station for running a promotion in which women voluntarily smacked each other, Spitzer got the State Athletic Comission involved to effectively fine this radio station for promoting boxing without a license. That is incredible.
Now, when a radio station receives the largesse of a fraudulent loan of almost a million dollars from a local charity, Spitzer is only interested in the charity, because that's all that's under his jurisdiction. Hmm. Given the results of this story, I'd imagine that if he really really wanted to, AG Spitzer could find some method creative enough to get his foot in the door.
We'll see how far his creativity extends when the report of his investigation comes out.
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