Will Smith wins damages over 'Hitler' slur

[ASHISH]

 UK media group apologizes to Will Smith over 'Hitler was a good person' story

Lawyers for Will Smith say a British media group has apologized for a story that falsely claimed the U.S. actor said Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was a good person.

Celebrity news and photo service World Entertainment News Ltd., or WENN, published an article in December about a Smith interview that appeared in a Scottish newspaper.

Smith's lawyer, Rachel Atkins, said, "The defendant published an article about the claimant entitled Smith: Hitler was a Good Person. The article alleged that the claimant had declared in an interview that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was a good person."

"It wholly misrepresents the claimant's actual words, given in an interview to the Daily Record, a Scottish newspaper and Web site," Atkins said.

WENN apologized for the piece, but Smith's lawyers say that was not enough. WENN has now made a formal apology at London's high court, and agreed to pay unspecified damages.

WENN'S lawyer, John Melville-Smith, says the company accepts that the report was wrong and is apologizing.

[briann]

While I think Will Smith's comment about hitler was benign, he's still a moron who beleives in vast governmental UFO conspiracies.

(But he'd still make a better candidate than Obama Bin Laden)

[qwerty]

While I think Will Smith's comment about hitler was benign, he's still a moron who beleives in vast governmental UFO conspiracies.

(But he'd still make a better candidate than Obama Bin Laden)

Protecting the earth from the scum of the universe

[Daniel]

Why are all of you defending Will Smith? After all, he's just another affirmative action actor, right?

[JTFFan]

Why are all of you defending Will Smith? After all, he's just another affirmative action actor, right?

Yes, he's like all the other Black actors

[Ehud]

Why are all of you defending Will Smith? After all, he's just another affirmative action actor, right?

Ah, I was going to write a response to this, but then I just realized that you are being sarcastic. 

Acting, sports, and music are professions where it is possible to have a black succeed on his own merits without being affirmative action. 

[Eliezer Ben Avraham]

Smith's comment was true. He said that Hitler thought he was doing good. Thats probably true, Hitler didn't think he was doing a bad thing, he was just so twisted that his understanding and good and bad was so perverted that it caused him to do what he did.

[EagleEye]

Smith's comments were taken out of context.  I am indifferent to Will Smith.  I have nothing positive or negative to say about him, but his comments were portrayed as an endorsement as Hitler, when all Smith was really saying is that Hitler THOUGHT he was a good person.  That Hitler BELIEVED in what he did.  Not that Hitler was right.

[angryChineseKahanist]

So, if he was misquoted, what was the full comment?

[EagleEye]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/12/25/people.willsmith.ap/index.html

Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.' "

And I do agree that Hitler did not have any "guilt."  Some paranoid liberals threw a hissy fit over this, accusing Smith of actually supporting Hitler.

[Eliezer Ben Avraham]

Smith's comments were taken out of context.  I am indifferent to Will Smith.  I have nothing positive or negative to say about him, but his comments were portrayed as an endorsement as Hitler, when all Smith was really saying is that Hitler THOUGHT he was a good person.  That Hitler BELIEVED in what he did.  Not that Hitler was right.

yea, I don't like many hollywood actors and I'm sure he has done bad things, but this isnt one

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

I disagree with Will Smith's analysis of the fuhrer (ys"vz), but don't know enough about him to say whether he is a good person or not. Few Hollywoodians are.

Several years back, I remember that he was pro-Clinton.