Hollywood celebrities, almost all of them hard-line leftists, are always complaining about how they are insulted by the press and their privacy is invaded and they have no legal recourse.
To me there is a good, solid revenge in that because their problem stems mostly from the Sullivan Case. In the Sullivan Case the Supreme Court ruled that a “public figure” could only sue someone for libel or slander under extreme, almost impossible conditions.
That is what Hollywood stars are whining about now.
Before the Sullivan Case, celebrities had the same right to sue as mere mortals.
But when a leftist cries about the Sullivan Case, Ole Bob is the only person on earth who seems to REMEMBER how the Sullivan Case came about.
During the early 1960s when Saint Martin Luther the King was undergoinghis martyrdom in Alabama, one city official who opposed him was attacked by the New York Times.
The New York Times attack included and lies and terms so extreme that it was almost impossible for said official, Sullivan, not to collect huge damages from the New York Times.
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren could not let the New York Times lose the case.
On the other hand, if they let the New York Times get away with this under a complete new definition of free speech, the entire libel and slander law in America would disappear.
The New York Times had met EVERY criterion of malicious slander against Sullivan.
Nonetheless the Warren Court HAD to let them get away with it.
This is why the New York Times HAD to get away with it:
In the 1960s liberals operated under the rule that, “There is no room for racism in America.”
So the national media used lies and personal attacks against segregationists as a matter of course. TIME magazine put out a book on the segregationists which quoted every white segregationist in ebonics. Every white segregationist was quoted as using “thuh” for “the,” “hawses” for horses” and “seguhgation” for segregation.”
I knew a lot of the segregationists quoted, and they didn’t use that kind of English.
Every integrationist in the book, white or black, was quoted in the King’s English.
But this was standard practice against segregationists. It was REQUIRED practice against segregationists.
As the British court said in the 1987 case of The Crown versus Joseph Pierce, “The truth is no exuse” for racism. They sent Pierce to prison for telling the truth for racist purposes.
By the same token, malicious and personal lies about anyone liberals and respectable conservatives agree to call “racists” is the highest morality today as it was inthe 1960s.
If anyone challenges the right of “anti-racistgs” to use slander conservative spokesmen, to prove their respectability, will lead the lynching party.
So in the 1960s lies and libel were routine against us segregationists and everybody knew it.
So the New York Times COULD not he allowed to lose the case against the segregationist Sullivan for doing what every liberal was SUPPOSED to do and every respectable conservative had to accept.
But here was the New York Times with its pants down. They had met every conceivable criterion of the malicious libel law that every American depended on to keep anybody with a printing press from destroying him.
If everybody were suddenly deprived of their right to sue for libel by the Supreme Court, even the slavish World War II generation would have revolted.
So how could the Supreme Court save the right to libel segreagationists for the national media and not destroy the entire libel law?
To do this, the Warren Court invented the “public figure.”
It turned out that the minor official Sullivan, down in Alabama, was a “public figure.”
So Sullivan was subject to an entirely different libel law from the one that applied to mere mortals.
In order to save the New York Times and in order to justify the liberal duty to libel segregationists, the Supreme Court had to invent a “public figure.”
And a “public figure” had tp include a minor Alabama official. In order to make Sullivan a “public figure” they had to extend this category “public figure” not just to movie stars and presidents, but to anybody who had been in the public eye at all.
Even Old Bob fell into that category when he was Young Bob.
Now leftist show people are subject to the same libel law SGREGATIONISTS were.
They don’t like it.
Now the Jane Fondas and Warren Beatteys cry and moan because they have no protection against libel. But they would have cheered the Sullivan Decision when it first came out.
In fact Hanoi Jane did just that.
What goes around comes around.
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