Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

How? What does he do to enforce this privacy right? If he can't enforce it, in what sense does it exist?

Stop thinking like a lawyer for a moment and think like a human being. I didn't use the word "right" or "enforce." He had an expectation of privacy.

How? What is the sanction for this wrongdoing? If there is none, in what sense should she not have done it?

See my first comment. I'm not talking about the law. Exodus says an eye for an eye, but in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says to turn the other cheek. So God has sent mixed messages here. But I think what she did is not justified by what he did, even though I can understand her desire for revenge.

How many time do I have to say he has no privacy right in keeping his inappropriate conduct toward her secret should she choose to make it public? How many times can you fail to even remotely articulate a theory under which he has such a privacy right? Under what theory can he make her not tell the truth about him? None, because he has no such privacy right.

And he doesn't for obvious reasons, including the fact that such a right would chill the speech of victims of actionable misconduct too. We don't get to sue the people who accuse us of wrongdoing unless they are intentionally lying for exactly that reason.

You don't have to say anything more about privacy rights -- you've said quite enough.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

I don't think that a single thing as described makes him have done anything illegal. Doesn't mean he acted correctly. Similarly, I think that she and babe.net violated his privacy even though there isn't a damned thing that he can do about it.

Exactly. Both of them harmed the other, and neither has any recourse. Neither of them should be proud of how they acted. It's too bad that so many people seem to feel that you have to pick a side here. Not liking what she did doesn't make me like what he did any more.

Anyway, I liked this tweet and the thread that followed:

All I know is that if Aziz Ansari didn't want his sexual misconduct to become a national news story, he could have left his apartment as soon as things got creepy. It's not like she was blocking the door.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

In a group of left-leaning lawyers exactly one thinks it's okay that she brought up borderline accusations against him publicly. It is not going to ruin his career.

Don 't confuse "okay" with approval by me (or I suspect, most others here). I think we're all free speech absolutists because, well, most lawyers tend to be, given the importance of that freedom we're all taught in first year.

But am I comfortable with what Katie Way did? No. Am I comfortable with what Grace did? Not really, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt because I think the culpable party here is Babe, and more specifically, Way. And if you've read Way's embarrassing email to Ashley Banfield, I think I'm right in that indictment. (There is no question, this Way person is an immature fool who has no business tackling an issue so sensitive.)

When dealing with an identified or easily identifiable person, there are some story details You Just Don't Write. Even with celebrities, people wait until the subject is dead to author sexually explicit tell-alls. (Scotty Bower's somewhat questionable Full Service is a highly entertaining example.)

Why is this rule observed? In part out of a sense of decency. In bigger part because no one wants to encourage expansion of libel law. Ansari's story walks the line of defamation (direct and by imputation, which is a troubling but accepted theory). We currently have a President who wants to expand libel law to resemble what they have in Britain (where a powerful person may still squash a story by court order simply on grounds it undercuts state authority [try getting the Pentagon Papers published in that environment]). We have autistic megalomaniacs like Peter Thiel engaged in champerty against the press.

Tempting an expansion of libel laws is never a good idea, but right now, it's uniquely dangerous. Ansari is not going to sue, but someone else - some well heeled shitball from Wall St., some social invalid tech wizard - is going to hire a team of mercenaries to replicate the Gawker debacle. And it's going to set terrible precedent.

There's nothing to gain and a shit-ton to lose testing the notion we should have "radical transparency." And let's face it -- radical transparency is an awful concept. It's like pure Libertarianism. It seems cool when you're 16, but ludicrous when you're 30. And it's worth noting the person who brought it to us, Zuckerberg, also brought us the most malignant and insipid technology of the past twenty years.

You want to live in a world where it's socially acceptable to name and link last week's lousy lay on Facebook? You want to live in a world where the only people immune to that are the uber-wealthy, now armed with libel law expanded by the army of Trump judges in the district and appellate courts?

Publishing the Ansari story is "okay." But it's also incredibly indecent, and horrendously unwise.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Exactly. Both of them harmed the other, and neither has any recourse. Neither of them should be proud of how they acted. It's too bad that so many people seem to feel that you have to pick a side here. Not liking what she did doesn't make me like what he did any more.

Anyway, I liked this tweet and the thread that followed:

He didn't seek to destroy her career when she rejected his advances. He wrote her an apology for being aggressive.

She knew there was a good chance of significant harm to him when she agreed to talk to Babe.

The room Grace should have left most quickly was the one in which she met with Katie Way.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by greatwhitenorthchick

Perhaps not vote for a tax bill that adds trillions to the deficit.

Deficits. How quaint.

"They don't count." - Dick C.

[Hank Chinaski]

out of this

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Adder

It is not going to ruin his career.

Too early to say, at least it will limit the stories his show can tell. And my point wasn't whether she ruined his career, it was whether she aimed to.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

See my first comment. I'm not talking about the law. Exodus says an eye for an eye, but in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says to turn the other cheek. So God has sent mixed messages here. But I think what she did is not justified by what he did, even though I can understand her desire for revenge.

Can you understand that she feels she was victimized and as such wants to warn others?

Not necessarily directly related, a rape survivor and advocate's reaction.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Tempting an expansion of libel laws is never a good idea

There is no libel law to expand. You mean tempting a constitutional amendment to curtail free speech and press rights. That isn't going to happen.

Yeah, find the right test case and the Roberts majority could tinker on the edges if there were strong conservative consensus in that direction, but there isn't and such a case doesn't currently exist.

Maybe 45 will eventually lead the utterly valueless elected members of the GOP in that direction, but it's not imminent.

You want to live in a world where it's socially acceptable to name and link last week's lousy lay on Facebook?

It says something about our collective age that (1) you say Facebook and not snapchat or whatever I'm too old to know about, and (2) you think it's not already happening and accepted.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Deficits. How quaint.

"They don't count." - Dick C.

People will pretend to care when we have Democratic rule again.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Can you understand that she feels she was victimized and as such wants to warn others?

Not necessarily directly related, a rape survivor and advocate's reaction.

No. I cannot. Because it is not acceptable to seek to destroy a person's career for what he did. Because a person "feels" something does not mean it is objectively actionable. This is why professional journalists, rather than petulant children like Katie Way and the rest of Babe, traditionally controlled the Fourth Estate.

Look, I like the Internet's capacity to speak truth to power as much as the next guy. I love how it's destroyed all the facades we used to believe. When you aim that weapon at a Weinstein, a Trump, or even at the complicit members of the media itself, that's a good thing. When a child (and Katie Way is very much a bratty child) takes a story about how someone "felt" (quite unreasonably) what was clearly not an assault was somehow an assault, and then seeks to destroy someone, nobody is speaking truth to power.

Babe is TMZ. This is a TMZ story. And that's legal, and it's okay. But nobody's giving Harvey Levin any awards. And nobody should. He's a pariah. You can try to justify Way's actions by suggesting Grace really believed this was an event demanding action with a high likelihood of ending Ansari's career. But no one - and I mean no one - buys that bullshit. Ansari did not deserve this, and Grace is delusional if she truly thinks Ansari deserved to be #metooed for this. And no - her "feelings" don't change anything, because objectively, the facts don't justify them.

There are objective standards to this stuff. Ashley Banfield laid them out pretty coherently. Way fucked this up, but good. I'll bet half of Manhattan knows exactly who Grace is, and she'll suffer career damage from this. You know who won't? Way. She's cashing in on this. And everyone who apologizes for her, everyone offering a tortured justification for what was objectively indefensible, is filling her bank account.

You want to get in bed with a 23 year old Harvey Levin in the making? Have at it. I'm done.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Can you understand that she feels she was victimized

Really? You are responding to a post in which I said I understand her desire for revenge. Is it possible to have a desire for revenge without feeling victimized?

and as such wants to warn others?

I didn't get from the Babe piece that her main interest was warning others.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Because it is not acceptable to seek to destroy a person's career for what he did.

You're (1) assuming her motives and (2) failing to view what he did from the victim's perspective.

Read the Abby Honold piece I linked above. She's a victim and an advocate and not a lawyer, so yeah, there are things that aren't perfectly accurate in it, but it should at least give you some sense of how its not "clearly not an assault."

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

You're (1) assuming her motives and (2) failing to view what he did from the victim's perspective.

Read the Abby Honold piece I linked above. She's a victim and an advocate and not a lawyer, so yeah, there are things that aren't perfectly accurate in it, but it should at least give you some sense of how its not "clearly not an assault."

I'm specifically viewing it from her perspective. That's required to ascertain whether, objectively, her response to it, and her view of it, were reasonable.

They were not reasonable. A reasonable person in that circumstance would not do what she did. A less than fully matured adult, manipulated by a reckless media person, would take the actions she did.

I wouldn't be surprised if Grace regrets what she did, having now considered the situation from Ansari's perspective. If you wish to make it okay to do what she did because she "felt" a certain way, then we must also consider Ansari's feelings. He felt things had progressed differently, but nevertheless apologized. And this situation involved two people. His "feelings" therefore, must also be considered in determining whether such a potentially damaging article was warranted.

Regarding Grace's intent, no reasonable person could argue, given the current climate, that Grace didn't know the potential damage this could do to Ansari. I give her a bit of a pass because I suspect she was manipulated. But she knew or should have known this could have ended the man's career. And Way certainly knew this.

The piece you linked does not make the case for this being an assault. It makes the case that men should understand that consent is a very delicate thing, and they should be more attuned to the cues that it is in question, and where in question, refrain. But in Ansari's case, where consent became questionable, he did indeed refrain. That he tried to cajole, that he tried to pester his way to "enthusiastic consent" (an incredibly subjective standard I suspect we'll unfortunately be seeing more often), does not make his actions an assault. The author's theory does not get us there.

Again, I stand on what I said earlier. I remain done. Consider this a mere further explanation of why.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

out of this

I'm actually ready to go back to talking about the last stupid think Trump did.