"If there's one thing America needs, it's more lawyers. Can you imagine a world without lawyers?"
Lionel's character, sadly, went away when Hartman was murdered in real life, but Selma Bouvier-Terwilliger-Hutz-McClure, one of Marge's twin sisters, is still around, working for the DMV, and, presumably, will be enjoying her hobby of filing nuisance lawsuits with the assistance of new counsel.
Also in real life exists a man named Daniel Balsam. No friend of spam, he. But instead of doing what the rest of us do - deleting it while cursing - he sues the people who send it to him.
After receiving just one too many unwanted message, Balsam quit his job in marketing, enrolled in law school, and started making some sweet coin - he's taken in over a million dollars in court judgments and lawsuit settlements with companies he accused of spamming him.
He also set up a website called danhatesspam.com to help you join the bonanza, if you wish to.
"I feel like I'm doing a little bit of good cleaning up the Internet," Balsam said.
Cisco Systems Inc. figures that 200 billion spam messages clog the WWW every day - and that's 90 percent of all email.
Other attorneys claim that Balsam is using the legal maneuver of suing out-of-state firms that would rather shell out a settlement than have their ambulance chasers actually have to leave the office and go to a courtroom.
"He really seems to be trying to twist things for a buck," said Bennet Kelley, who is a defense attorney.
I'll pause for a second to let that one sink in.
"There is nothing wrong per se with being an anti-spam crusader," said Kelley, but Dan abuses the processes by using small claims court. A lot of people will settle with him to avoid the hassle."
I will state for the record that I know many upstanding attorneys, all fine men and women.
But there are others...
To be specific, California law prohibits companies from sending junkmail that leads the recipient to think it's not coming from a commercial venture, or tries to make you think you're getting something for nothing.
Pro tip: You ain't.
Another peg for Balsam to hang suits on is the requirement that any such email gives the recipient the chance to opt out of getting anything more from, for example, letsgetnaked.com.
From porn pushers to the California Asparagus Festival, Balsam takes them all on and usually walks away with a check in his mailbox (the real kind).
I don't like pornography, especially in the wrong hands, as it were, and I dislike asparagus only slightly less.
But I'm not going to court over it!
"I feel comfortable doing what I'm doing," Balsam says. So let's not send him any spam.
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