THE REAL JACK ASS.

The matter of Jack Ass v. Viacom International Inc. concerns an electrical lineman in Montana named Jack Ass, who stumbled upon the MTV show "Jackass" two years ago and was moved to mark his displeasure with litigation. The other day, in the Montana Twentieth Judicial District Court, Ass filed a six-page complaint against Viacom, which owns MTV, for "plagiarizing" and "defaming" his name with a TV show and a movie depicting young men who, among other things, snort lines of wasabi and pee on snow and eat it.

Ass is forty-four. He lives in Hot Springs, a ranching community of about five hundred people, seventy-five miles north of Missoula, in a tiny one-room structure he calls the Jack Shack. Just recently, he got rabbit ears for his TV, and now it receives one channel. It is not MTV. If he wants to watch cable, he calls a buddy and asks if he can come over. Sometimes he says, "Hi, it's Jack," and sometimes he says, "Hi, it's Bozo."

"It's only a small lateral step sideways from Bozo to Jack Ass," he explained the other day. "I can be Bozo or Jack Ass."

He has been Jack Ass for only five years. Before that, he was Bob Craft. But in 1990 his brother died in a car accident, and seven years later he decided to change his name, to help a cartoon character he had created, named Andi Ass, crusade against drunk driving. On two Web sites and through a not-for-profit organization called Hearts Across America--the operations are run out of the Jack Shack--the two Asses promote designated driving and personal responsibility, with slogans like "Be a smart ass, not a dumb ass." The Asses differ from the "Jackass" movie in that they have never promoted jumping head first into the blades of a moving ceiling fan.

The reason for the delay between the show's ...