"In the case of the male vegetarian, what may look like vegetarian or sexual orientation discrimination is really sex discrimination in the form of gender stereotyping..."

Says the abstract for a law review article titled "Of Meat and Manhood," which has led to a defamation and invasion of privacy lawsuit against the author:

New Jersey banker Robert Catalanello on December 28 sued Zachary Kramer, an associate dean at Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law....

The article cites former employee Ryan Pacifico's 2009 complaint against Catalanello, including a charge that he made numerous derogatory comments equating Pacifico's vegetarianism with homosexuality. "You don't even eat steak dude. At what point in time did you realize you were gay?" he said, according to Pacifico's complaint....

"Catalanello harassed Pacifico not because Pacifico is vegetarian, but because Pacifico was not sufficiently masculine," reads one passage that Catalanello cited. "The key here is that vegetarianism acts as a proxy for effeminacy."

Defamation? Presumably, Catalanello disputes Pacifico's allegations and doesn't like the way Kramer, in at least one part of his article, presents the allegations without saying something like "according to Pacifico's compliant."

Here's the "Meat and Manhood" article. More from the abstract:

[Current doctrine says] that an employee cannot raise an actionable theory of sex discrimination to “bootstrap” protection for an unprotected trait.... By focusing on the male vegetarian case study – which involves allegations of vegetarian, sexual orientation, and gender-stereotyping discrimination – the Article argues that sex discrimination often manifests as other forms of bias.

That is, the law doesn't give special protection to you because you're a vegetarian, but it does let you sue for sex discrimination. So the litigant tries to present anti-vegetarian animus as a matter of gender. That's an interesting problem of employment discrimination law, but think about why the courts don't approve of this "bootstrapping."

(Via Taxprof.)

Tracking down Tawana Brawley in pursuit of a $429,000 in damages (and interest) for defamation that occurred in 1987.

"In all these years, she’s never told the truth about this hoax or paid me a cent," said Steven Pagones, the former Dutchess County prosecutor who was called a "gang-raping, kidnapping racist."

The case was catapulted onto the national stage by attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, and the then-little-known Rev. Al Sharpton, who claimed she was raped 33 times.

Celebrities weighed in, with Bill Cosby posting a $25,000 reward for information on the case, Don King promised $100,000 for Brawley’s education and boxer Mike Tyson gave her a $30,000 watch to ease her pain.

Brawley has just been located, working as a nurse, under an alias, in Virginia.

"British paper sues Lance Armstrong for $1.5m over lost libel action."

"Sunday Times paid now-disgraced cyclist $485,000 in 2006 over claims that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs."

That reminds me of this news item from The Des Moines Register, June 18, 1959, reprinted in Bill Bryson's "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir" (p. 106):

A high court jury awarded entertainer Liberace 8,000 pounds ($22,400) damages Wednesday in a libel suit against the London Daily Mirror. The jurors decided after 3½ hours of deliberation that a story in 1956 by Mirror journalist William N. Connor implied that the pianist was a homosexual. Among the phrases Liberace cited in his suit was Connor’s description of him as “everything he, she or it can want.” He also described the entertainer as “fruit-flavored.”

"We have of course gotten used to mommy bloggers embarrassing their children..."

"... saying which child they like best or how much they drink while stuck at home doing art projects."

Louis C.K. regularly embarrasses his kids and surely one day they will get their revenge. These are humiliations that might require a kid to get therapy later, but they are not on the same order as what [Liza] Long did. They are unlikely, for example, to prevent the kids from getting a job. So far the children’s rights movement has focused on protecting children from neglect and abuse, but maybe it’s time to add a subcategory protecting them from libel, by their own parents.

That's Hanna Rosin, writing about the "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother" blogger, whom we talked about here.

"George Zimmerman has filed his defamation lawsuit against NBC and three reporters for their false editing..."

"... of his non-emergency call to police to report Trayvon Martin..."

The 24-page complaint alleges “NBC News saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain.”

ADDED: More detail here.

Voter suppression by "Walker allies" or last-minute, uncheckable smear by Barrett people?

Salon reports:

With both sides counting on dramatic turnout, Tom Barrett’s campaign is charging Scott Walker supporters with dirty tricks. In an e-mail sent to supporters last night, Barrett for Wisconsin Finance Director Mary Urbina-McCarthy wrote, “Reports coming into our call center have confirmed that Walker’s allies just launched a massive wave of voter suppression calls to recall petition signers.” According to Urbina-McCarthy, the message of the calls was: “If you signed the recall petition, your job is done and you don’t need to vote on Tuesday.”

Last night I talked to a Wisconsin voter who says she received just such a robo-call. Carol Gibbons told me she picked up the phone and heard a male voice saying “thank you for taking this call,” and that “if you signed the recall petition, you did not have to vote because that would be your vote.”

There's a dirty trick in here somewhere, but whose? Somebody said she received this junk? Prove it. Who was it from? All the Barrett campaign is on the hook for saying is that they've heard reports from people who say they've gotten these calls. Why would Walker people do this? They aren't the desperate ones.

Urbina-McCarthy’s email requested donations to fund a new round of phone calls to all recall petitioner signers to make sure they know they still need to vote. 

Oh, they raised money off this completely deniable allegation?

Reached over e-mail, Barrett spokesperson Phil Walzak said, “If true, this shows the desperation of Walker and his right wing allies in the final hours of the campaign, and the depths to which they will sink to maintain their grip on power at the expense of the people and values of the great state of Wisconsin.”

This shows desperation, all right, but the Walker campaign isn't the one that's desperate. I love the egregious deniability here: If true... Great intro phrase for the sleazy rumor-mongers of the world.

ADDED: David Prichard — a journalism professor at U.W.-Milwaukee — has this May 2012 article in Wisconsin Lawyer about prosecuting false political speech in Wisconsin:

Wisconsin has three misdemeanor statutes that may be used against people who make intentionally false statements in political campaigns. The statutes prohibit false representations affecting elections, criminal defamation, and giving false information for publication. This article reports how the Wisconsin statutes have been used – and, in some cases, misused – over the past two decades....

Political speech is not automatically protected by the First Amendment. Intentional, calculated lies may be punished; at least 17 states have laws that forbid various kinds of false campaign speech. But the wisest course of action is to save criminal prosecution for the most egregious cases. The statutes discussed in this article should never be used against a sincere critic, a confused or careless partisan, or the perpetrator of a juvenile prank.

"Slut meant female dog once too."

Comments rhhardin, in the "What exactly did Rush Limbaugh apologize for?" post, below. That made me look up "slut" in the Online Etymology Dictionary:

slut

c.1400, "a dirty, slovenly, or untidy woman," probably cognate with dialectal Ger. Schlutt "slovenly woman," dialectal Swed. slata "idle woman, slut," and Du. slodder "slut," but the ultimate origin is doubtful. Chaucer uses sluttish (late 14c.) in reference to the appearance of an untidy man. Also "a kitchen maid, a drudge" (mid-15c.; hard pieces in a bread loaf from imperfect kneading were called slut's pennies, 18c.). Meaning "woman of loose character, bold hussy" is attested from mid-15c.; playful use of the word, without implication of loose morals, is attested from 1660s.

Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily. [Pepys, diary, Feb. 21, 1664]

Sometimes used 19c. as a euphemism for bitch to describe a female dog. There is a group of North Sea Germanic words in sl- that mean "sloppy," and also "slovenly woman," and that tend to evolve toward "woman of loose morals" (cf. slattern, also English dial. slummock "a dirty, untidy, or slovenly person," 1861; M.Du. slore "a sluttish woman").

What provoked rh to talk about the bitch/slut connection was Richard Lawrence Cohen saying:

Is Fluke going to sue, or is she suing, this son of a bitch for defamation? I would think it's defamation per se.

Which prompted me to say:

Is Limbaugh's mother going to sue you for calling her a dog? She's clearly not a dog.

The fake-but-accurate story — smearing Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson — that appeared in Madison's Cap Times last Saturday.

The Cap Times reveals that it published, then took down a story that "falsely said that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were joining state Rep. Steve Nass, R-town of La Grange, in pressuring the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to purge its archives of posters from last year’s protests at the Capitol in Madison."

The story was based on a news release that purportedly came from Nass’ office, but was in fact fabricated by Madison labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki [who] sent the fake release to a staff member who then forwarded it to Associate Editor John Nichols, who wrote the story.

The release seemed plausible because on Wednesday, The Capital Times reported that the University of Wisconsin-Extension’s School for Workers abruptly called off an event called “Art in Protest” connected to the Capitol protests after a Nass aide told its organizers that it would be in poor taste. The organizers said publicly that they called off “Art in Protest” for a “variety of reasons” and that “now is not the best time” for it, but the story paraphrased two informed sources anonymously saying that Nass’ office threatened the school’s funding.

Konopacki helped organize the canceled event, and in that story, he was quoted as saying: “I understand why the School for Workers had to make this move. They're in survival mode. But I'm outraged. This is an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and is an attack on academic freedom.”

Nichols wrote a short story based on the fake release and made follow-up calls to flesh out the story, but began to have doubts when he discovered that other sources had not heard about the release.

Questioned about the release, Konopacki revealed that he created it using Photoshop. He said he intended it as a prank (in an initial email he said he “wanted to point out the hypocrisy between allowing Wisconsin protest art in the Smithsonian but not at the Pyle Center” where “Art in Protest” would have taken place), but is apologetic about the confusion it created.

The Cap Times took the embarrassing and libelous story down after 40 minutes.

By the way, John Nichols has a new book: "Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street." Meade and I have been reading it.

ADDED: In his book, Nichols is highly critical of the media for getting the story of the Wisconsin protests wrong. Excerpt:

While it was easy to laugh at Fox, it was harder to comprehend the coverage of events in Wisconsin by the New York Times. The Times can and does produce terrific reporting on a variety of fronts. In many senses, it remains the last bastion of old-school “newspaper of record” seriousness in a media landscape that is littered with the carcasses of once-great news-rooms, thus making it more important—and influential—in today’s news landscape than ever before in its history. The Times even has something that’s lacking at virtually every other print, broadcast, or digital news outlet in America today: a solid labor writer in the person of Steven Greenhouse. Unfortunately, he was not dispatched to Wisconsin to cover the story. The Times reporters who did come to Wisconsin brought with them some of major media’s worst misconceptions and biases with regard to unions and working-class people. And in so doing they became a part of the story, reinforcing Governor Walker’s intransigence.

Walker is a media junkie.... he reads, listens to, and watches media with an eye for how different outlets are interpreting and reacting to stories....

The Times... blew an even bigger piece of the Wisconsin story several weeks later. When Republican legislators used backroom maneuvers to pass Walker’s bill, the Times reported that the fight was “over.” But the editors in New York forgot to tell the people of Wisconsin....

The hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who rallied at their capitol and in communities across the state said by their very presence that they were no longer going to accept the official “line” from old-media outlets that failed them—and new media outlets that simply compounded the sins of the fathers by aggregating and amplifying the folly of media outlets that have replaced reporting with stenography to power. What dawned on Wisconsinites and their allies in other states was that the problem was not simply the overt bias of a Limbaugh or an O’Reilly but the overt ignorance of media outlets that imagined Americans no longer approved of organized labor—and would never ever stand in solidarity with a trade-union movement that was arguing for public services, public utilities, and public schools.

When media outlets got around to conducting polls on the issues that arose in the Wisconsin struggle, they found that, to paraphrase the old Firesign Theatre routine, everything they “knew” was wrong. A CBS News/New York Times survey, conducted shortly after Wisconsin exploded, revealed that six in ten Americans opposed the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public sector union workers, while 56 percent were opposed to the cutting of pay or benefits to reduce state budget deficits. The USA Today/Gallup survey released two weeks after Governor Walker made his proposal indicated that 61 percent of Americans were opposed to legislation that would take away the collective bargaining rights of unionized government workers. Only one in three of those surveyed backed any move to undermine protections for labor.

... Many was the day when an absurdly ill-conceived or simply inaccurate report on the front page of the Walker-supporting Wisconsin State Journal newspaper had been deconstructed by Sly and his guests before Madisonians had trudged out their front doors to find the offending publication in the snowbank where it had landed.

About that blogger who didn't get to use the journalist shield law...

David Carr — at the NYT — is not too sympathetic:

In the pre-Web days, someone like Ms. Cox might have been one more obsessive in the lobby of a newspaper, waiting to show a reporter a stack of documents that proved the biggest story never told. The Web has allowed Ms. Cox to cut out the middleman; various blogs give voice to her every theory, and search algorithms give her work prominence....

“I view our case as a blow for the First Amendment,” said [the man who won at $1.5 million judgment from her]. “If defamatory speech is allowed just because it is on the Internet, it cheapens the value of journalism and makes it less worthy of protection.”

Herman Cain's lawyer, Lin Wood, a defamation expert.

He says he's not there to file lawsuits against the women who are accusing Cain, but to "give him my legal evaluation of whether any of these particular statements are potentially actionable." Whatever he says about filing lawsuits, his presence on Cain's team is a way to caution accusers and, at the very least, influence them to be careful about what they say.

Wood has some interesting names on his list of former clients:

Wood represented Richard Jewell, who was suspected and cleared of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing and later filed libel suits against media organizations and a local college, some of which were settled.

Wood's other notable clients included John and Patsy Ramsey, suspected but later cleared in the unsolved murder of their daughter, JonBenet Ramsey. The couple filed defamation suits against a number of media companies.

Wood also filed a defamation lawsuit against Vanity Fair magazine writer Dominick Dunne on behalf of former Congressman Gary Condit, who was romantically involved with intern Chandra Levy but never an official suspect in her 2001 murder. The suit was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Those are all people who were dreadfully accused in the press.

Note to Cain accuser: Saying "very specific instances" does not equal specifying instances.

The still-unnamed woman communicates through a lawyer:

The lawyer, Joel P. Bennett, who represents a former employee of Mr. Cain’s at the National Restaurant Association, said the accusations did not center on a single exchange that could be easily misinterpreted, which is how Mr. Cain has characterized it. Mr. Bennett said there were multiple episodes that led his client to file a formal complaint with the restaurant association.

“Mr. Cain knows the specific incidents that were alleged,” Mr. Bennett said during a brief news conference outside his Georgetown office. “My client filed a written complaint in 1999 against him specifically and it had very specific instances in it, and if he chooses not to remember or to acknowledge those, that’s his issue.”

This is maddening. Very specific instances. Okay. That's what we need to hear about. What are they?! They don't become very specific instances because you say "very specific instances"! That's still completely abstract. Get specific. Get specific to the point where we can judge for ourselves whether the details amount to something that counts against Cain and that exposes you to a defamation lawsuit if the details are false.

Mr. Bennett described his client as “anxious” to rebut Mr. Cain’s comments while maintaining her desire not to become “a public figure.” 

You want to accuse and remain impervious to any tests of your truth-telling.

Mind-boggling!

Sarah Palin threatens to sue Random House over "Rogue."

Ha. I said it the other day: "Let's focus on Random House, the venerable publishing house."

"Was Random House aware that [Joe McGinniss] was making a desperate overtime bid to save face?"

"And if so, why did it allow him to come forth with most of those tawdry accusations without proof or proper sourcing?"

McGinniss's sleaziness has been well understood. Let's focus on Random House, the venerable publishing house.

In the email [at the link], McGinniss reveals that his manuscript, then under legal review at Crown/Random House, could not prove its most headline-grabbing allegations. And yet, many of these “salacious stories” that lacked “proof” (in McGinniss’s own words) ended up in the book, and on televisions everywhere during the author’s current media tour … without proper sourcing, and without any apparent new evidence to support them.

It's hard for a public figure to sue for defamation in the United States, but this email may be the proof of reckless disregard for the truth that Sarah/Todd/Bristol Palin would need.

That doesn't mean they should sue. It would boost the profile of McGinniss and his book and shine a spotlight on his various allegations.

"Things that I never imagined people would care about are now being plastered all over blog sites..."

"... including pictures of me from when I was 17 and tweets that have been taken completely out of context. I tweeted once (it was reported that I said it twice) that 'I wonder what my boyfriend @RepWeiner is up to.'"

ADDED: Imagine if Anthony Weiner were a Republican. (I know, it's such a hackneyed visualization, but it's important here.) The liberal/lefty blogs would be shredding him mercilessly. I'm not saying Weiner's not getting his hair mussed. But if he were a Republican, the feeding frenzy would be of a different magnitude entirely.

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt writes:

So the media is just accepting this absurd assertion that all his accounts were hacked? They were all hacked for the purpose of sending a boner photo to some woman in Seattle? And he hasn't bothered to contact law enforcement?

Right.

Must be nice to be a Democratic politician.

Nevadabob writes:

1) Weiner hasn't reported the alleged hack to the FBI.

2) Facebook hasn't announced any investigation of Mr. Wiener's allegedly hacked account.

3) Twitter (the company) knows the IP address of the computer that really sent the tweet. However, Twitter hasn't announced any investigation. They also haven't released the IP address of the person who actually sent the tweet so we can see if that IP address belongs to the Democrat Rep. Wiener

yfrog knows the IP address of the person that actually uploaded the obscene photograph Mr. Wiener's yfrog account. Thusfar, yfrog has not released that IP address so that we can track down the nefarious hacker who did that. Also, Mr. Wiener could request that they release that IP address to the public so we could help him track down the hacker. But he hasn't.

Mr. Wiener so far refuses to tell us what his own IP address is. And, he is refusing to answer detailed questions that would allow us to determine if the IP address which sent the tweet is at his home in New York.

It's trivially easy to determine if his accounts have REALLY been hacked. Is the FBI investigating? He is, after all, a sitting member of Congress and it is a felony to impersonate a member of Congress. It's also a felony to hack people's Facebook and Twitter accounts.

I'm left to wonder why hasn't Mr. Wiener reported this breach of Homeland Security to the proper authorities? Is it because falsely reporting this would itself be a felony?

ADDED: Is it news if a politician is unfaithful to his wife? It's not important (unless there's some big hypocrisy involved, as there is with politicians who have made their careers spouting "family values"). But I think it is news when a politician mishandles his internet communications. Minor news, but worth noting.

And it's really news — serious news — if either: 1. the internet accounts of a politician have been hacked in an effort to destroy the man, or 2. the politician makes the false statement that he has been victimized by a crime. One or the other has occurred in this case (unless I'm failing to see some other option).

Should we all be closing our Twitter accounts lest some devious prankster destroy our reputation? Or has Weiner —  for his own purposes — maligned Twitter's business and undermined the Twitter-user's sense of security? I want to know!

AND: If Weiner is lying about his accounts getting hacked, he could be sued by Twitter (and the other companies) for defamation.

ALSO: NBC News reports "Lewd Photo Sent Over Rep. Weiner's Hacked Twitter Account... his Twitter account was hacked." Not that Weiner makes that claim, but an outright assertion that his account was hacked. Twitter is getting slimed here. Does it deserve it?

Should psychiatrists offer opinions about the mental conditions of various characters in the news?

The official rule of the American Psychiatric Association is that they can speak generally but it's unethical to give a professional opinion about an individual. The rule grew out of a case involving Barry Goldwater:

Just before the 1964 election, a muckraking magazine called Fact decided to survey members of the American Psychiatric Association for their professional assessment of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the Republican nominee against President Lyndon B. Johnson....

The survey, highly unscientific even by the standards of the time, was sent to 12,356 psychiatrists, of whom 2,417 responded. ... Half of the respondents judged Mr. Goldwater psychologically unfit to be president. They used terms like “megalomaniac,” “paranoid” and “grossly psychotic,” and some even offered specific diagnoses, including schizophrenia and narcissistic personality disorder....

There were several attempts at a psychodynamic formulation of Mr. Goldwater’s character. One unsigned comment called the candidate “inwardly a frightened person who sees himself as weak and threatened by strong virile power around him,” and added that “his call for aggressiveness and the need for individual strength and prerogatives is an attempt to defend himself against and to deny his feelings of weakness.”...

Goldwater sued for libel and won, which led to the APA rule barring opinions. Obviously, it brings psychiatry into disrepute when ordinary people can see it used dishonestly to promote a political goal. But I don't see why it's so bad for psychiatric experts to speculate and opine about public figures. We the people need to think about the events in the news, and some expert opinion is helpful. Let us decide which experts are worth hearing from. The political hacks will be enjoyed or condemned as we see fit. But some analysis is going to be good. Frame it as speculation and hedge appropriately: I would need to meet with the individual to make a professional diagnosis, but here's what I can say....

If the experts don't do it, the pseudoexperts will. As for the fear of lawsuits, libel law is constrained by free speech values. Mere opinion in not libel. And public figures have to meet a high standard to prove libel.

Why then did Goldwater win his lawsuit? The linked article, by psychiatry professor Richard A. Friedman and published in the Science section of today's New York Times, says:

The Supreme Court awarded the senator $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages — and, more important, set a legal precedent that helped change medical ethics for good.

Of course, any lawyer knows that the Supreme Court doesn't award damages. It only affirms the lower court's decision. But what is this Supreme Court case and how did it deal with the free speech issue? Hello? New York Times? Don't you wonder how this case would square with New York Times v. Sullivan (second link, above)? So did Justices Black and Douglas, dissenting from the denial of certiorari in Ginzburg v. Goldwater! Justice Black wrote:

This case perhaps more than any I have seen in this area convinces me that the New York Times constitutional rule is wholly inadequate to assure the 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open' public debate which the majority in that case thought it was guaranteeing....

This suit was brought by a man who was then the nominee of his party for the Presidency of the United States. In our times, the person who holds that high office has an almost unbounded power for good or evil. The public has an unqualified right to have the character and fitness of anyone who aspires to the Presidency held up for the closest scrutiny. Extravagant, reckless statements and even claims which may not be true seem to me an inevitable and perhaps essential part of the process by which the voting public informs itself of the qualities of a man who would be President. The decisions of the District Court and the Court of Appeals in this case can only have the effect of dampening political debate by making fearful and timid those who should under our Constitution feel totally free openly to criticize Presidential candidates. Doubtless, the jury was justified in this case in finding that the Fact articles on Senator Goldwater were prepared with a reckless disregard of the truth, as many campaign articles unquestionably are. But, even if I believed in a balancing process to determine scope of the First Amendment, which I do not, the grave dangers of prohibiting or penalizing the publication of even the most inaccurate and misleading information seem to me to more than outweigh any gain, personal or social, that might result from permitting libel awards such as the one before the Court today. I firmly believe it is precisely because of these considerations that the First Amendment bars in absolute, unequivocal terms any abridgment by the Government of freedom of speech and press.

So the jury found that the New York Times standard was met, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court declined the case, with Justices Black and Douglas arguing for greater free-speech protection.

And when I say "the New York Times standard was met," I mean the legal standard from the case New York Times v. Sullivan. I do not think the New York Times standard of journalism was met for this article!

Syracuse University College of Law threatens to bring "harassment" charges against a student who blogs about law school life.

FIRE reports:

[Len] Audaer's ordeal began on October 15, 2010, when he was summoned to a meeting with SUCOL Associate Professor of Law Gregory Germain due to "extremely serious" charges. In the meeting, held on October 18, Audaer learned that the charges involved "harassment" for his alleged involvement with SUCOLitis. The anonymous, satirical blog attributed obviously fake quotes to SUCOL students, faculty, and staff. The blog included a disclaimer stating, "No actual news stories appear on the site."

So the blog names students and quotes them saying things that they did not say, and the idea is, it's satire and everyone should know that the quotes are fake. But how would you feel — in a tough job market — knowing prospective employers will Google your name and see that quote?

This is similar to a problem I have had with the blog Sadly, No!, which allows commenters to use my name and comment, pretending to be me. I complained, because I don't want my name attached to quotes that aren't mine, and the answer was that readers know it's satire.

Not all readers pick up on satire. (Remember Fox Nation picking up an Onion story about Obama and presenting it as news?) And satire usually has some element of truth in it. A real individual — especially a student who is looking for a job — has to worry about what people will think. And when readers enter a blog because they've Googled a name, they may not stay around long enough to absorb the context. If non-idiots can make a mistake about The Onion, which is a well-known and well-done satire, I would have even more anxiety about an obscure and possibly not-very-well-written satirical blog. 

The Chronicle of Higher Education has picked up the story:

SUCOLitis aspires to be something like The Onion of law-school life. The Syracuse, N.Y., satirical news blog has attracted thousands of views with fake headlines about beer pong, third-year students serving burritos, and the election of the university’s “sexiest Semite.” It delights in attributing fake quotes to students and faculty, as well as to famous alumni like Vice President Joe Biden, who is quoted as calling SUCOLitis “even funnier than me.”

Syracuse University officials aren’t laughing....

A spokeswoman for the law school, Jaclyn D. Grosso, won’t discuss details of the case. In an e-mail, she tells Wired Campus only that a faculty prosecutor has been appointed to investigate claims that a student violated the code of conduct, and to file a charge if appropriate.

She adds, “According to the faculty prosecutor, a motion has been filed with the hearing panel for a protective order to prevent public disclosure of the names of the students, faculty, and staff who were targeted in the blog, or who testify in the case, unless they consent to have their names disclosed. This was done to protect their privacy rights.”

I'd really like more information about this case, and the law school is suppressing it — apparently in order to protect the students who worry that their reputations are suffering injury. The blog is no longer public, so I can't see what kinds of fake quotes were used and how obviously satirical the writing was. Free speech is important, and I'm suspicious of charges of "harassment," but defamation is different. If you report that a person said something they didn't say, that can be seen as a lie.

Here's a hypothetical: A satirical blog aggressively goes after an individual law student, attributing all sorts of damaging quotes to him: confessions to drug use, cheating on exams, and plans to sexually harass co-workers instead of getting any work done if he gets that job at the law firm. Imagine a satirical blog, written anonymously by another student who's interviewing for the same job. You see the point.

And by the way, to be admitted to the bar, your need to pass a character review.

The NYT likens real, consensual sex to a false allegation of rape and frets once more about privacy and the internet.

"Duke Winces as a Private Joke Slips Out of Control," reads a NYT headline. I wondered what Duke winced? John Wayne is too dead to wince, and who cares what some Euro-aristocrat feels? Turns out it's Duke, the University, and the article is about that college girl who made big, detailed PowerPoint presentation about her sex conquests and sent it out to "a few friends" by email, whence it migrated to the web, purportedly to her shame and dismay. Supposedly, the young woman — Karen Owen — didn't mean for her hilarious writing to go viral. Is that so? My experience with writers is that they want readers. But that's a side issue ignored by the NYT, which is fixated on Duke University:

On campus, students were abashed, if not a bit fatigued by the notoriety.

Just four years ago, the Duke men’s lacrosse team was embroiled in scandal when a woman falsely accused three Blue Devils players of having raped her at a party where she was to perform as a stripper. One year later, the charges against the players were dropped and the prosecutor in the case, Michael B. Nifong, was disbarred.

What?! Why liken real sex between consenting individuals to a false charge of rape?! "Notoriety" — that's a ridiculous umbrella term.

Seven of the 13 athletes Ms. Owen wrote about were — or still are — on the lacrosse team. This incident has angered many of those who are already sensitive to their image, according to students and alumni who know them. The lacrosse players contacted would not comment.

Huh? So... those 7 guys aren't the ones who were falsely accused of rape, are they? And are the lacrosse players really so "sensitive" that it bothers them for people to know that they had actual sex with classmates?

On campus, other students had plenty to say.

Kishan Shah, 18, a pre-med student from Carmel, Ind., said the university should not revoke Ms. Owen’s degree, but “they should let her know that she has disgraced the school.”

Who suggested the crazy punishment of revoking her degree? And since when do we punish people for talking about their sexual encounters? If she's lied about someone, maybe they have a defamation claim, but it's hard to see how a young man is hurt by the rumor that he had sex with a woman, even if she thinks he wasn't a good enough lover.

Mike Lefevre, a 21-year-old senior and the president of the student body, said that people were not sure whom to be more concerned about. “Should we be more worried about the young woman’s privacy or worry about the individuals who were named?” he said. “It’s not so clear to us who was the victim, and who we should reach out to.”

Give me a break. If you do things with people, they can talk about it. These days the talk is on the internet. Get used to it. If you don't like it, try limiting your sexual encounters to people who love and respect you. And quit whining.

I crack down on Newsbusters for saying "CNN Host Calls for Crackdown on 'Bloggers' in Wake of Sherrod Incident."

Newsbusters is getting a lot of attention for an article with that flashy headline, but the headline is completely unjustified by the video it purports to analyze. Let me walk you through the text and show you what I mean:

Anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the "mixed blessing of the internet," and agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others on the internet.

Phillips and Roberts agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others. Take note. You'll see that they don't. And what does that have to do with the "Sherrod Incident" referenced in the headline? Andrew Breitbart is the polar opposite of anonymous. He seems to love getting his name out there and all over everything. And the disparaging of Shirley Sherrod was done through her own image and words in a video clip.

Newsbusters quotes Roberts telling us what we know:  the short clip of Sherrod's speech made her seem a lot worse than the whole clip. But, as Roberts notes, we did go further and get the whole context.

Phillips brings in the the problem of anonymous bloggers:

"There's going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable," Phillips said. "How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they're actually given credibility, which is crazy. They're a bunch of cowards, they're just people seeking attention."

Roberts cites a conversation with Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture":

"Well what Andrew talked about with me was this idea of a gatekeeper but there are huge first amendment rights that come into play here - freedom of speech and all that. And he said the people who need to be the gatekeepers are the media to check into these stories," said Roberts.

So, Roberts isn't saying there should be a government crackdown. He recognizes the First Amendment, and says Keen said he wanted the media to be the gatekeepers. Newsbusters says:

Phillips wanted to go even further, asking if "there's going to come a point where something's going to have to be done legally" about anonymous bloggers.

So... legally... does that imply a government crackdown or is Phillips only suggesting that there can be defamation lawsuits brought by individuals in which the identity of "anonymous" — really, the word should be pseudonymous — bloggers can be discovered?

"There has to be some point where there's some accountability. And companies, especially in the media have to stop giving these anonymous bloggers credit," she said.

So, Phillips ends up back at the idea that the media need to shift and winnow the material that comes up through the internet. Where's the crackdown?

"If you're in a place like Iran or North Korea or something like that, anonymous blogging is the only way you could ever get your point of view out without being searched down and thrown in jail or worse," said Roberts. "But when it comes to a society like ours, an open society, do there have to be some checks and balances, not national, but maybe website to website on who comments on things?"

Not national... I think that means he's saying the federal government should not be doing the checking and balancing. Roberts is saying that "website to website" something should be done — maybe just a rejection of anonymous comments. It's annoying that Roberts doesn't distinguish between pseudonymous bloggers and anonymous (or pseudonymous) commenters, but I don't see any place where he agrees even with Phillips's use of the word "legally," which was completely vague and most likely referred only to defamation lawsuits.

CNN's two regulation-happy reporters...

They never mentioned regulation! I think they were talking about the marketplace of ideas in which we are all the gatekeepers. In that marketplace of ideas, I'm cracking down on Newsbusters! This much-linked article is reeking crapola. And yet it is raking in traffic.

CNN's two regulation-happy reporters think the Sherrod situation can help bring attention to the "necessity" of blogging reform if she brings a defamation lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart.

What is the sentence with that word "necessity" in it? I went to the video, and I couldn't find it. I listened to the end of the segment 3 times, and it seems to me that the 2 reporters peter out with Roberts talking about how we all have to "be aware" and how he always tells young people not to put naked pictures of themselves on the internet.

"Regulation-happy"? "Blogging reform"? "Crackdown"? What nonsense!

IN THE COMMENTS: Old Dad said...

CNN's real problem is cablecasting boring and pedestrian filler.

Exactly. Newsbusters, ironically, is making them seem exciting. I think Roberts knew they were being pointless and tedious. That's why went all naked teenagers!!!!! in the end.

Over at Media Matters, Eric Boehlert is writing about me.

Eric Boehlert. Eric Boehlert? Oh, I know where I read his name recently. He's a character in Iowahawk's brilliant "I'll Take a Cashier's Check, Mr. Breitbart." He's the one handing out the assignments:

EZRA KLEIN: hey boehlert whats the assignment

ERIC BOEHLERT: 3 part essay

ERIC BOEHLERT: 1. Explain why unemployment report shows stimulus is working

ERIC BOEHLERT: 2. link BP oil spill to teabaggers

ERIC BOEHLERT: 3. spin latest Gallups

JOSH MARSHALL: crap crap crap and I have a lab assignment for global warming due

ERIC ALTERMAN: o fack me looks like an all niter...

Ha. But why is he on my case? "Ann Althouse continues to blog about Journolist; appears to have no idea what it was," he says. Well, then, release the archive so I can cure my terrible ignorance. That's all I want.

Althouse continues to post item after item about Journolist, despite the fact that... Althouse has no idea what Journolist was.

Stop me before I blog ignorantly again, Eric. Send me the archive. Or send it to Breitbart and collect $100,000 and I'll get to it that way.

Boehlert goes on to quote me saying that if I were to sue a Journolist member for defamation — something I'm not inkleined to do — I would be able to get discovery into the archive. Eric B. says:

Althouse, a law school prof and very public blogger, was thinking out loud about suing the owner of Journolist to find out if any of the 400 journalists on the listserv ever wrote anything nasty about her in their private emails. (Ego much?)

Eric Boehlert continues to write about me like that even though he has no idea what the thing I wrote that he just quoted says.  I cited a specific item of defamation against me that was published on the web and that remains there. If I were to sue based on that remark, I would be able to get discovery into relevant evidence about that claim. Moreover, I know that there are specific, related remarks about me in the Journolist archive, because that remark was tweeted, in Ezra Klein's own words, "after I was alerted to her thread on Journolist."

Boehlert imagines that one of my commenters nails his argument for him. Here's that comment:

I would think a law professor might have a better grasp of this. But on what grounds would you seek the archives? To borrow a popular argument of the right, where in the Constitution does it say you have the right to know what others are saying about you, especially when you have no proof they are saying anything defamatory about you.

Clue to Boehlert: Not all law is in the Constitution. The tort of defamation is a matter of state law. The extent of discovery is a matter of procedural law. I don't need a constitutional right. (Conceivably, there is a right that would bar my access to the archive, but I don't need a constitutional right to discovery if I bring a defamation claim.)

So, Boehlert, your post is incredibly lame, but, as a law professor, I'll give you a rewrite. I think Media Matters portrays itself as a champion of truth, so... see if you can get a little closer to something that feels a little more truth-y.

***

On a related note: Yesterday, James Taranto, in Best of the Web, opined that a journalist's shield law would prevent discovery into the Journolist archive in a defamation suit:

Seems to us it would depend on the venue. Most states have some sort of shield law protecting reporters from having to disclose confidential sources, but the specifics vary from state to state. In federal court, however, there is no such privilege.

The privilege is about shielding confidential news sources — informants. The Journolist archive contains the statements of journalists talking to each other. I don't see how the privilege could apply.

[Journalists] should, of course, have all the legal protections of the First Amendment, which among other things mean that Althouse almost certainly would not win her defamation suit against Klein. His offending tweet, it seems to us, is a constitutionally protected opinion rather than a false statement of fact.

One reason I have no interest in suing is that I want the broadest First Amendment rights here. I would not want to have to argue that the statement in question — "Ann Althouse sure has a lot of anti-semitic commenters" — is not an opinion but a false statement of fact. But I'm afraid it is, quite plainly, a false statement of fact.

"Well, I'd like to know whether they are defaming me on JournoList."

That's something I blogged back in March 2009.

I'd still like to know. Don't I have a right to know what a gang of 400 journalists are saying about me, as they endeavor to shape my reputation, decide that all the good people must avoid linking to me, or whatever it is they do?

If I were to bring a defamation suit based on Ezra Klein's lie "Ann Althouse sure has a lot of anti-semitic commenters," I would seek access to the Journolist archive, and I believe I would get it. There is no privilege that would shield this information from discovery. Lawyers, argue with me if you think I'm wrong.

I'm not the litigating type — though when I practiced law, I worked in the litigation department — and I am not threatening to sue. I am saying this to make one more argument for why the Journolist archive needs to be made public.