Posted by Atticus on December 7, 2004, at 14:18:31
In reply to Lou's response to Atticus's post- » Atticus, posted by Lou Pilder on December 7, 2004, at 11:24:02
Nope, sorry, Lou, libel law just doesn’t work that way. It wouldn’t matter if the derogatory words appeared on an Internet mental-health forum or tumbled from the lips of Bill O’Reilly. Libel is about whether a published statement is TRUE and believable to readers – and if it turns out to be untrue, what were the mitigating circumstances under which the error occurred. It is NOT about words that merely might hurt feelings. Never was, and never will be. Any libel case where the plaintiff is nonplussed over being called an “idiot” or a “fruitcake” is going nowhere fast – no matter how upset the plaintiff is. The judge would give the jury specific instructions as to what constitutes libel and what does not. Sympathetic or not, the members of that jury are bound by law to follow those instructions, or else you end up with a mistrial or strong grounds for an appeal. Unless a “reasonable person” might actually be led to believe by the published work that the person being ridiculed is ACTUALLY a “fruitcake” or is GENUINELY a “pig eater,” you just don’t have a case. You wouldn’t even have a case if someone used that most reprehensible of terms, n****r, to describe an African-American. Name-calling, no matter how vile, doesn’t add up to libel.
All that said, my explanation of libel law was only meant to answer your query about what constitutes libel in the first place, since a number of people here seemed confused regarding the issue. It really has little to do with this site. Dr. Bob HAS made name-calling an offense here, as is his right. I do think he gets carried away with the “profanity” thing (I mean, seriously, “fr*g” is considered profane ?! We used to say that in fourth grade). But he and I hashed that out a while back, and the discussion ended with the classic “Bobism”: “Let’s agree to disagree.”
Which kind of spontaneously leads me to toss out this question to everyone for the fun of it: What’s your favorite Bobism? We could collect them into an online thread on Social called “The Book of Bob.” Atticus
poster:Atticus
thread:423270
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20041109/msgs/425773.html