I’ve written about Kathy “Five Feet Of Fuckup” Shaidle’s idiocy before on this site, but this really takes the cake.
Now, I am not particularly a big fanboy of Jason Cherniak – he often comes across as painfully self-important, to say the least. But I’m not so stupid and crazy as to, say, publicly disparage his professional abilities as a lawyer. Cherniak has decided to sue her for libel, and given the circumstances and Canadian libel law he should probably win.
(Remember, being a right-wing blogger means free speech should never ever be constrained, even where that speech has criminal intent!)
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I’ve never heard of either individual. But I usually enjoy these “But it’s free speeeeeech” “Yup. You’re free to say it and I’m free to sue you” type things.
I’ve only ever heard of Schaidle through this blog, but Cherniak’s post made me wonder . . . so, given that he is suing a blogger who publicly disparaged his professional ability as a lawyer, should I, as a writer, sue any blogger/reviewer who publicly disparages my professional ability as a writer? Or, given that I’ve publicly disparaged The Dark Knight, can Christopher Nolan sued me for impugning his competence as a filmmaker?
I think every comic reader who posts on the internet may be in DEEP trouble if you’re right, Will.
Will, there’s a serious difference between disparaging artistic endeavour and disparaging professional ability.
@MGK: why so? My degree from USC is in professional writing, not in artistic endeavour (or, God forbid, “fine arts”). Even setting such aside . . . if someone were to say that Dr. Dre or Timbaland create ill beats or otherwise neglect the production process, isn’t that in the same way impugning their professional endeavours as saying that some random lawyer or other didn’t serve his client? Like, if a review of FutureSex/LoveSounds had said “It’s mainly catchy, but shit, Timbaland’s production of ‘SexyBack’ is criminal because of its non-syncopated beats and amateur-ish vocals,” isn’t that sort of the same thing as saying a lawyer hadn’t served his client?
This came up fairly often in the first course I taught at USC, in fact, which was a writing course associated with a general education section called “Professionalism and the Public Good in America.” The professor, Dallas Willard, argued that there are only three types of professionals; doctors, lawyers, and clergymen. In my own class, I opened the definition to further debate, especially concerning a specific assignment that addressed journalistic ethics, and then further, into writing and the arts. We had some terrific discussions about what does and does not constitute a “profession” but never came to any solid conclusion. My point being that I don’t see much difference, in certain cases, between “his writing suxors” and “his lawyering suxors.” And looking at his mini bio, I have as much schooling and experience in my profession as Cherniak does in his.
Will, you can say you’re a “professional writer,” but that doesn’t make it a profession in the sense of one that is internally regulated in the manner that lawyers, doctors, or engineers (to name a few) are.
Members of “the professions” have to follow a specific code of conduct. If they don’t follow it, they can be stripped of their job. Asserting that Cherniak is being a “bad lawyer” in this sense is a much more dramatic allegation than me saying “There Will Be Blood had a shitty score and you should not see it because of that.”
Ah, OK, so the allegation isn’t, “he could have run a better defense,” it’s, “he engaged in misconduct and ought to be disbarred?”
So this is more like an accusation of plagiarism in the arts, where a piece of contracted work might actually be unusable because of intellectual property issues?
@MGK: well, you’re right in that I’m not “regulated,” but then again, I don’t call myself a “professional writer.” It is, in fact, a title I earned from the University of Southern California, a nationally accredited institution. Where regulation does, in fact, occur, both internally and externally. Also: reporters can be stripped of their press credentials, no?
As a sidenote: do engineers really follow a code of conduct? I had no idea.
if someone were to say that Dr. Dre or Timbaland create ill beats
If they were to say that, Will, it’d be a compliment. If something is “ill,” it’s good.
do engineers really follow a code of conduct?
Yeah.
“Engineers are not registered in a specific discipline but are prohibited by the Code of Ethics from practicing beyond their training and experience. Breaches of the code are often sufficient grounds for enforcement, which may include the suspension or loss of license, as well as financial penalties and now, through recent changes to Canadian law, could also result in jail time should negligence be shown to have played a part in any incident in which there is loss of human life.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Engineer#Registration_and_regulation
It’s wikipedia, I know . . . but still.
There’s a lot of meat there, but I’m not sure how much of it relates to the professions in the original post. Artistry isn’t a realistic metaphor for illustration here. I’m a graphic designer for a “professional firm”, my girlfriend is an architectural draftsman. Neither of us can be sued for our work, but our disaster scanarios are very different in the eyes of the law. With mine, the worst that happens is that I get fired*. With hers, someone goes to jail**. I’d ask yez to not make meat of low fruit – try replacing “blogger” with “doctor”, or “policeman”, if you’re feeling brave.
* I skip proofreading/legal and claims are made that are not factual – quality of life may be impacted to the point someone should go to jail, but the responsibility can be distributed – no professional actively vetted my choice, and while I can be held responsible, the mechanism is, frankly, not comparable. I’m not held to the standards of a classic professional.
** Building falls down. Someone signed off on that building, every step of the way, even if it was just a quick Jonh Hancock. That person will now has absoilute need of a lawyer…
“given that he is suing a blogger who publicly disparaged his professional ability as a lawyer, should I, as a writer, sue any blogger/reviewer who publicly disparages my professional ability as a writer?”
I can answer that question under US law; I do not know that the same circumstances apply to Canadian libel laws. I’m also ignoring whatever Kathy Shaidle originally said, because that was not your question.
In the US, to establish libel, the plaintiff has to show that the defendant made disparaging statements with factual predicates. It’s not enough to say “You suck,” but you need to show that someone said “You suck because you have, on multiple occasions, had sex with a telephone pole and that’s perverted.” Mere opinion cannot be the basis of a libel suit – or at least, not a winning libel suit.
Because the legal profession is a self-regulating profession with specific codes of professional practice and conduct, there is a specifically implied factual predicate to the statement “Lawyer A sucks as an attorney”; that statement has a specific factual implication that Lawyer A is a poor attorney under the Code of Professional Conduct and the Bar Rules in his state, and is therefore liable for malpractice.
Writing and other artistic endeavors are, in the eyes of the law, inherently subjective. There is no objective measure by which to judge someone a competent or incompetent writer, and a writer who fails to employ any objective measure of merit is not automatically subject to malpractice actions. So if I said “Writer A sucks as a writer because he doesn’t appear to have cracked a copy of Strunk & White’s or any other stylebook,” that’s going to be opinion and never libelous.
If, however, I said “Writer A is a plagiarist and copyright infringer” – that’s a factual statement, and could be the basis of a libel suit.