American Idol’s father sues publisher
After Fantasia Barrino won American Idol, a book was published by Simon&Schuster called Life Is Not a Fairy Tale 
In papers filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Joseph Barrino is seeking damages from Simon&Schuster, which released”Fantasia: Life Is Not a Fairy Tale”in 2005. The book was made into a TV movie, starring Fantasia, that aired on the Lifetime network in August.
Among the details disputed by Joseph Barrino: that he was hostile to the music industry, that he asks his daughter for money when she visits him, that his children’s musical careers were more important than their education.
I guess anyone can see the irony that he’s suing for $10 Million against the accusations that he was greedy for money.
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Just to play devil’s advocate, let’s assume for a moment that his depictions in the book and movie were completely inaccurate or blown out to wild proportions. In his shoes, I’d definitely want to seek compensation for the damage to my reputation. If only for a sense of justice, I’d want to milk them for every penny I could just to ensure that the punishment didn’t come off as a slap on the wrist for a company with deep pockets. I’d be pissed and I’d want them to regret doing what they did. Moreover, I’d want them to think twice the next time they considered victimizing someone for profit.
Granted, this isn’t necessarily the case, but I can see how he might be a perfectly reasonable father who simply got a bad reputation because someone wanted to sell an otherwise uninteresting story by twisting the truth.
Very true. I wonder how he’s going to be able to prove he didn’t say or do those things?
But how damaged was his reputation? More people are hearing about this than knew about the book or movie.