Too Many Hasselbecks on TV

October 25, 2006 2:48 PM by S.M. Oliva | Other posts by S.M. Oliva | Comments (7)

I'm not sure if this qualifies as "identity theft" or violating the "right of publicity":

The View cohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck is fuming mad over an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in which a character, whose name is very close to her own, is raped and killed, she said on Tuesday.

"Last week Law & Order: SVU had an episode where a 30-year-old woman in New York City is raped twice and then murdered – and her name is Elizabeth Hassenback," Hasselbeck, 29, said on The View. "I found this a little disturbing."

Hasselbeck called an SVU producer to berate the show's "socially irresponsible" character-naming policies.

An SVU spokesman told People Magazine that, "all names have to be cleared through legal."

It would be impossible for any fictional television show--or any work of fiction for that matter--to exist if authors could only use names that weren't otherwise in use. Maybe Hasselbeck's argument is that only "celebrity" names like hers should be off-limits. Is it socially "responsible" to only recycle the names of us little people?

Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, once said that after the show had been on the air for some time, he learned of an actual Homer Simpson who worked in a nuclear power plant. Was Groening being "socially irresponsible" by continuing to use this man's name for his bufoonish, accident-prone cartoon character? (Incidentally, a later Simpsons episode actually has Homer becoming enraged by a bufoonish, accident-prone fictional television character with his name.)

Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission can establish a "Do Not Name" registry for every individual who wants their name off-limits to shameless Hollywood writers.

Finally, to add insult to faux-injury, the episode featuring Ms. Hasselbeck's doppelganger may itself have been plagiarized from another work of fiction.