San Antonio man finds Dallas 'wife-beater' shirt-sale site offensive
SMU Journalism Professor Craig Flournoy talks about a San Antonio man who wants to shut down a Dallas-based Web site that sells sleeveless undershirts known as "wife-beaters," because he claims the site is offensive.
By SARAH PERRY
The Dallas Morning News
A San Antonio man wants to shut down a Dallas-based Web site that sells sleeveless undershirts known as "wife-beaters," because he claims the site is offensive.
Patrick Greene, 60, says he's filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the Texas attorney general's office, a Dallas City Council member and the FBI.
Greene said the site appears to glorify, or at least make light of, spousal abuse.
However, spokesmen for the agencies contacted by Greene, along with free-speech experts, say there's little that can be done.
"I don't see where legally you could shut it down unless the site is calling for violence against a specific individual," said Craig Flournoy, a former Dallas Morning News reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and is now an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Methodist University.
"One of the things about the First Amendment is that it gives you the right to be an idiot."
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