I'm unsurprised to learn there are, as the previous occupant of the White House might say, very bad people on both sides.
I'm no fan of the NYT; I agree with Rebecca Solnit's assessment that "no one has ever loved the status quo more than the editorial board at the New York Times". Moreover, it seems clear in this case that the NYT genuinely erred. However, Palin's suit against the NYT, like Thiel's-in-all-but-name suit against Gawker, is representative of a strategy pursued by right-wing sociopaths with great success during the past several decades. By ceaselessly complaining that the "lamestream media" (a favorite Palin catchphrase) is treating them unfairly and maliciously, even by accurately reporting their words and deeds, they've advanced two important aims. First, they've steered the rubes who support them away from relatively better news sources like the NYT toward relatively worse ones like Fox "News". Second, they've bullied outfits like the NYT toward he-said, she-said stenography and both-sides-ism.
"The grand and legally inadmissible irony of the case is that everyone knows Sarah Palin is entirely guilty of fostering the politics of belligerence and contempt that have led the Republican Party to its current violent and anti-democratic condition.": True, but another grand irony is that the NYT, like other supposed bastions of the liberal establishment, has offered little resistance to that trend.
Well done. I'm a (no longer practicing) attorney, but not a libel expert, so I don't claim insider knowledge, but this was well written and a solid take on what this case is about.
I'm unsurprised to learn there are, as the previous occupant of the White House might say, very bad people on both sides.
I'm no fan of the NYT; I agree with Rebecca Solnit's assessment that "no one has ever loved the status quo more than the editorial board at the New York Times". Moreover, it seems clear in this case that the NYT genuinely erred. However, Palin's suit against the NYT, like Thiel's-in-all-but-name suit against Gawker, is representative of a strategy pursued by right-wing sociopaths with great success during the past several decades. By ceaselessly complaining that the "lamestream media" (a favorite Palin catchphrase) is treating them unfairly and maliciously, even by accurately reporting their words and deeds, they've advanced two important aims. First, they've steered the rubes who support them away from relatively better news sources like the NYT toward relatively worse ones like Fox "News". Second, they've bullied outfits like the NYT toward he-said, she-said stenography and both-sides-ism.
"The grand and legally inadmissible irony of the case is that everyone knows Sarah Palin is entirely guilty of fostering the politics of belligerence and contempt that have led the Republican Party to its current violent and anti-democratic condition.": True, but another grand irony is that the NYT, like other supposed bastions of the liberal establishment, has offered little resistance to that trend.
Well done. I'm a (no longer practicing) attorney, but not a libel expert, so I don't claim insider knowledge, but this was well written and a solid take on what this case is about.