Dumb Political Correctness

With this case, you have to remember that the judge let discovery go forward (I think that was back in Feb). So CNN's chance to have it dismissed by motion already came and went and they have been in discovery for 10-11 months. CNN's offer to settle probably reflects their own assessment of their own position at this point based on that discovery. ....

So CNN did attempt to have the Sandman case dismissed. Their argument was somewhat unique -- they said calling somebody a ‘racist’ is not a provable fact and therefore does not rise to the level of libel. CNN actually tried to say that there can never be a factual basis for calling somebody a racist.

Courts treat statements characterizing people as “racist” as non-actionable opinion because they cannot be proved true or false. … Sandmann cannot as a matter of law base a defamation claim on this statement as it offers an expression of opinion so subjective as to be unprovable.

No doubt probably every single one of you who read that thought the same thing -- CNN calls President Trump (and others) racist as a statement of fact all the time. So for them to go into court and claim that it’s not a provable fact, that such a claim cannot be factual, is directly opposite from what they publicly state every day. Anyway, the Court rejected it.
 
There is also an analogy in the Sandman matter to Richard Jewel (about whom there is a recent Clint Eastwood movie). Like Sandman, Jewell was involuntarily thrust into the vortex of the public eye against his will. Jewel became the center of a media controversy when the Atlanta paper connected him to a bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics there. Much of the rest of the media piled on. Sound familiar?

But just like Sandman, Jewell did not do what he was accused of doing. He was innocent and Jewel was subsequently completely cleared by law enforcement of any wrongdoing. Also like Sandman, his entire life had been negatively affected by this fake news feeding frenzy. Jewell had no choice but to take legal action against media outlets in order to get his name and reputation back. They were not going to do it own their own, even though they knew what they had done was wrong.

I think the Jewel story plus some other cases plus the now constant fake news we all have to deal with has generally corroded jury pool against the media. The media in America used to be held in high esteem. Not anymore. Now its bad. But they are not just seen as greedy ******** who will say anything to make a buck, they are also completely overcome with political bias. they are corrupt and everyone knows it. I dont know where you could find an untainted jury pool today for Big Media anywhere in America. Seems impossible. Which is probably another reason CNN settled. They just couldnt risk it going to a jury.

Here are a couple more examples. Remember Jayson Blair? He was with the mighty NYT. And he just made stuff up, literally pulled it out of his butt. He got caught and fired back in 2003.

Or how about Sabrina Erdely? Remember her? She was the reporter for Rolling Stone who fabricated the story of a student supposedly raped at UVA. The whole thing was fake. Her fake news destroyed lives. She too got fired, and sued.

But this is our media today. They make things up to suit their own agenda. And, as we saw with Gawker, there are plenty of juries out there who have had enough and are willing to shut this crap down. And it's their own fault.
 
Reading that Mr D there is no way I could be a personal injury lawyer.
When I think of PIs i think of slimy unethical (present company excluded) greedy scumbags taking flimsy or fake cases to bilk big companies into paying off to make the cases go away.
Then a case like this comes along and you see a completely different view and how
complex it gets even when the person deserves to get a big judgement but might not due to a jury ruling against him. The thought of him getting nothing from CNN is sick.

It's not ethically hard to be a personal injury lawyer. I think being an insurance defense lawyer is harder because the people paying them are not their clients and often have conflicting interests and priorities. I'm not saying they're unethical. Most of them are decent people doing the best they can. I'm just saying the balance is more difficult and complicated.

And the people who are dirty on the plaintiffs side usually aren't dirty because the cases are fake. It's pretty hard to fake a case. Obviously people can claim anything, but to actually get much of a recovery, medical documentation has to support your claim, and that would be hard to fake and extremely high-risk. It would be easy to get caught, and if you're caught, you could wind up in the slammer. I can't guarantee that it has never happened, but it's definitely not a widespread phenomenon.

They are dirty in how they get cases. It is illegal to directly solicit clients if you plan to charge a fee. They're not dumb enough to do this on their own, but they will use an intermediary (a case runner) and pay him or her cash under the table. That is still illegal, but it's extremely hard to catch people who do it.

When I handled car wrecks, I started to notice that clients (especially Hispanics) would often call me and say some guy named "Javier" kept calling them asking them to "see the doctor" (who obviously wasn't the doctor my client was seeing, which is why they'd call me to ask about it). I brought that up to my boss, and he told me Javier was notorious. The dude doesn't actually even work for a chiropractor. He has a double-sided racket. He solicits the clients off of police reports and "sells" them in cash to both lawyers and chiropractors. He makes a killing. Lawyers who advertise hate his guts, because they spend a fortune on ads, and this douche helps crooked lawyers undercut them. However, at least directly it's a victimless crime, so law enforcement doesn't give a crap.

The State Bar knows about him, but until the APD decides to go after him, there's no way to figure out what lawyers work with him, though I have my suspicions. You'd think the auto insurers would care, but in a way, this guy keeps their costs down. How? Because the lawyers who do this make money off of volume, not by spending the time and effort to fight the insurers to get the biggest recovery they can. If Javier and the lawyers who work with him went to jail, many of these people might end up with firms that actually litigate. The insurers don't want that.

By the way, there are several Javiers in every big city.
 
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Well spoken Deez and I get all that and appreciate you taking the time to explain how it all works on that side. I guess I don't think CNN would offer that little to settle in the first place. If they really want this to go away, they risk pissing off the plaintiff to where he won't settle with them for any amount. They also have to think about what they are risking - not just a judgement, but a lot of stuff coming out in discovery that they'd rather the public did not know about.

Furthermore, they are up against someone who strikes me as suing them and others as much for principle as the money. If he asks $275MM and settles for $1MM (and that low amount would for sure be leaked IMO) then he looks unserious about how he was harmed. IDT he wants that either.

I agree that $1M wouldn't be justice. However, let me play devil's advocate on this. First, I've never seen a client take offense to a $1M offer on anything. Even if they don't accept a $1M, they don't get so offended by it that they walk away from the table.

Second, $1M wouldn't be a crazy low offer. You have to look at the risks. It's a very politically-charged case in which you need a unanimous verdict to win. That means that if CNN gets one Trump-hater on the jury, it's a major obstacle to Sandmann winning regardless of what comes out in discovery. Does CNN take risk by going to court? Sure they do, but far less. It's not because the jury won't hammer them. They could. However, the federal appellate courts are VERY pro-media defendant in defamation cases. If things go badly for CNN with the jury, they can be bailed out on appeal. If Sandmann loses with the jury, he pretty much loses. Accordingly, it makes sense that Sandmann would be more risk averse than CNN would be.

Third, suppose Sandmann truly doesn't care about the money. (He does, and that doesn't make him unprincipled or a bad guy.) If he takes his case to court and loses, he will be framed as being totally discredited. If CNN has to write him a seven-figure check, it may not look as sexy as a $275M recovery, but it still sends a message. Why? Because though CNN can afford to easily pay him off, they **** on conservatives everyday. If they have to write out million dollar checks every time they do it or even a significant amount of the time, it'll definitely hurt their bottom line and more importantly, hurt their reputation.
 
Not a big Stephen King fan, either the writing, the movies or especially his political takes. So it is with some amusement I am able to let you know how he got in trouble with the woke crowd.

His crime? King dared say art should be judged on quality, not “diversity." He was responding to whining about Oscar nominations being too “white” and “male.”

Unaddressed by the bedwetter-class that King is apparently fine with discrimination based on genitalia or skin color over merit, as long as it does not involve the arts.



 
JF, you are right about that. The terrorists and the developing world will all recoil in horror about this, including all us traditional, Christians.

It is an abomination, but I think the main outcome is the toy company who made this is going to lose money and may go out of business. Nobody is buying this atrocity.
 
It is an abomination, but I think the main outcome is the toy company who made this is going to lose money and may go out of business. Nobody is buying this atrocity.

"Get woke, go broke" - Glenn Reynolds AKA Instapundit
 
Not a big Stephen King fan, either the writing, the movies or especially his political takes. So it is with some amusement I am able to let you know how he got in trouble with the woke crowd.

His crime? King dared say art should be judged on quality, not “diversity." He was responding to whining about Oscar nominations being too “white” and “male.”

Unaddressed by the bedwetter-class that King is apparently fine with discrimination based on genitalia or skin color over merit, as long as it does not involve the arts.





Are we saying that art is to be judged not on the basis of true genius or quality but instead we are handicapping the field? Wouldn't a person of color feel a bit slighted if they knew they won because of the handicap?

I'm beginning to think it doesn't matter how people win; they just want to win. Look at all the gloating and bat carrying to first base after a home run the 2017 Astros did.

I saw a girls softball team beat my daughters team by cheating (using ineligible players) and their parents were gloating and screaming in our direction. They were later booted from the tournament but these people looked like the type who wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

It's unbelievable .
 

It's funny, and if they do it, I think it would be cool to have one sent to him. But that's only because it's fun to bust Barry's balls. The states shouldn't do this. States shouldn't be using government money and resources to effectively give free advertising to a federal candidate. Would we have been ok with Texas doing "Yes we can" plates in 2008? I wouldn't have been.
 
Are we saying that art is to be judged not on the basis of true genius or quality but instead we are handicapping the field? Wouldn't a person of color feel a bit slighted if they knew they won because of the handicap?

You'd think so, but that's basically what affirmative action is all about, and we use that in college admissions, scholarships,g jobs, government contacting, etc. We actually consciously and intentionally violate the Constitution to do this, and nobody cares.

I'm beginning to think it doesn't matter how people win; they just want to win. Look at all the gloating and bat carrying to first base after a home run the 2017 Astros did.

I saw a girls softball team beat my daughters team by cheating (using ineligible players) and their parents were gloating and screaming in our direction. They were later booted from the tournament but these people looked like the type who wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

It's unbelievable .

Yep. Many people are ok with cheating so long as they win. They don't care about rules.

Furthermore, adults at children's sporting events are sometimes less mature than the children playing. We signed up Deez, Jr. for an on-base pee-wee soccer league this past fall, and the parents had to go to a 1-hour orientation. The dude who ran the league had to tell us the rules - not for the kids but for the parents.

None of them were unreasonable. They were stuff like not shouting foul language during the games, not entering the field of play to argue with referees, not tailgating and getting drunk before the games, not telling kids to injure other players, etc.

Many of us chuckled and laughed at some of these. The guy said, "don't laugh. When I started this job in the late '80s, we didn't have these rules, because they were common sense. They exist now, because your generation of parents lost their common sense and now have to be told this stuff, and every one of these rules got broken multiple times just in the last year."

(He was an old black dude who was an Army veteran, so he could lecture a bunch of whiny millennial parents without them getting offended.)
 
You'd think so, but that's basically what affirmative action is all about, and we use that in college admissions, scholarships,g jobs, government contacting, etc. We actually consciously and intentionally violate the Constitution to do this, and nobody cares.



Yep. Many people are ok with cheating so long as they win. They don't care about rules.

Furthermore, adults at children's sporting events are sometimes less mature than the children playing. We signed up Deez, Jr. for an on-base pee-wee soccer league this past fall, and the parents had to go to a 1-hour orientation. The dude who ran the league had to tell us the rules - not for the kids but for the parents.

None of them were unreasonable. They were stuff like not shouting foul language during the games, not entering the field of play to argue with referees, not tailgating and getting drunk before the games, not telling kids to injure other players, etc.

Many of us chuckled and laughed at some of these. The guy said, "don't laugh. When I started this job in the late '80s, we didn't have these rules, because they were common sense. They exist now, because your generation of parents lost their common sense and now have to be told this stuff, and every one of these rules got broken multiple times just in the last year."

(He was an old black dude who was an Army veteran, so he could lecture a bunch of whiny millennial parents without them getting offended.)

It is true that the Constitution is violated to redress past wrongs. I suppose the layer of guilt covering white America has in general worked quite effectively. The entitlement mentality is ingrained. I wonder how we could ever word an amendment that would specifically grant special rights to the few but not the total.

I talked to my Dad about this many times and we never could figure out how to construct laws/support for those who refuse to take care of themselves along with those who are legitimately impaired by the past. We see the massive homeless problem building in our larger cities. We can't just let people die in the streets. It's a matter of controlling the rot regardless of blame. We are stuck with it.

That softball tournament was a real eye-opener for me. These were 9-10 year old girls. The tournament was supposed to be made of teams from a league; not an all-star team from that league. They sent an all-star team and the tournament officials figured it out mid-game. The game was stopped and the coaches conferred. The cheaters families started yelling, "Play ball" over and over. A couple of cholo's started getting very aggressive and appeared to want to fight. I did see one man with some sense push them back. Probably a cousin.

Our coach came over and explained our options. He said, "We can win by forfeit or play on." They were ahead 2-1 around the 5th inning. We decided to play on. After a hard fought game (You wouldn't believe how competitive it got. This was fast pitch) we ended up losing by one run. The gloating from the other side pissed me off to no end. We couldn't believe it. Our girls wanted to cry but we stayed in the dugout and kept telling them, "Don't cry. We know what happened" and they all kept that stiff upper-lip. We stayed on our side because we weren't sure if the cholo's were going to wait for us in the parking lot. I know their type having lived in Laredo. Luckily they cleared out.

So we sat around (We weren't eliminated. It was double-elimination. A long day and it was hot as hell) waiting for the next game. I saw the lady in charge and she was so angry. She had called the police. She had tears in her eyes but as a black woman at work once told me, "If you see me crying you better clear out because it means I'm mad as hell and my tears just make me madder." She finally came over and said, "We kicked them out of the tournament and they will be banned in the future until they convince us they can be honest." It was awesome. Our girls screamed with glee.

And guess what? We went on and won the tournament.
 
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Their political sanctimony leads directly to the production of shyte movies, no?

There is clearly a "feminization" of Star Wars going on. I can confirm the younger generation of boys don't like it. They are highly attuned now to indoctrination attempts. I told my son it doesn't matter. Being a Jedi levels the playing field. The size of the body or gender does not impact the ability to summon your super power. I mean, look at Joda... not exactly fearsome...
 
There is clearly a "feminization" of Star Wars going on. I can confirm the younger generation of boys don't like it. They are highly attuned now to indoctrination attempts. I told my son it doesn't matter. Being a Jedi levels the playing field. The size of the body or gender does not impact the ability to summon your super power. I mean, look at Joda... not exactly fearsome...

They feminized Toy Story too and ruined the lead character to do it. Deez, Jr. wanted to see it, and it was disappointing to watch Sheriff Woody turn from a strong, loyal toy to a disloyal, chick-following candy-***.
 
Ever wonder how Ed Buck managed to avoid a lengthy prison sentence for so long? Same way that Jeff Epstein did. Check out a list of politicians receiving the maximum contributions from Buck (who was just arrested for allegedly running a drug den in exchange for participation in his sexual fetishes). And you already know which political party controls all things California. Wonder if he will be on the same suicide watch Epstein was?

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