Yes. And, frankly, that’s the truth: one person’s “slut” is another’s “healthy young woman.”
There is no way to sue for defamation when the term can mean so many things to so many people. You can’t be defamed by opinion. You can be defamed only by an objectively false statement.
And ‘slut’ is only objectively false if you adhere to the archaic definition.
So, uh-huh, from now on whenever anyone criticizes another person, say, the president or the head of Goldman Sachs or, hell, Joseph Kony, they’re going to have to be prepared to be dragged into court and prove that they’re not lying.
Or is it just sex that’s the problem here? The sexual reputation of women?
If that’s case, what you’re doing is re-establishing the outdated norms of sexual propriety and mandating that everyone must protect the sexual reputation of poor, weak women or face the wrath of the judicial system.
(Have we completely forgotten the prior issue here, that Limbaugh wasn’t actually making a claim of fact that a reasonable person would believe as true in the first place?)
No. Where do you get the idea that the Atkins court engaged in any analysis other than what we have laid out here?
In the Illinois case, the plaintiff swore in her complaint that she was chaste. Did you miss that?
As I said before, his claim that she was having so much sex that she couldn’t afford it seems to me to be a claim of fact, and one that a dittohead might believe as true. The “reasonable person” standard needs to be viewed, I believe, in light of the current electorate :(.
How much sex is that? There is no difference in cost no matter how much sex you have – assuming you have any, that is. True?
Criticizing or maligning someone’s reputation? There’s a difference. Do you drag them into court for criticism? No, that’s not defamation. You can call Obama a socialist all you like.
But yeah, if you’re going to call someone’s reputation into question (see categories for defamation per se), that’s a bit different. You go out and publicly allude that the daycare operator in your neighborhood is a kiddy diddler. His business fails because parents can’t take the chance that it’s true, so they pull their kids out. That’s wrong. But you want to be able to ask his ten-year-old son in court if daddy ever touched him down there. That’s fucked up.
You tell your clients that your boss slept her way into her position. Wrong. But now you want to make her tell you in court all the people she’s slept with to determine if she was promoted as a result of sexual favors. In so doing, you happen to find a bitter ex-employee only too willing to testify that he bent her over the copier one random day they worked together. In the meantime, she’s been let go because well, the firm can’t be stained by the question of impropriety, even it’s untrue. Yeah, that’s justice.
You may wish that sexual repression and judgement over a person’s sexual behavior is a thing of the past, but you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that it has not. Is it only women who are judged for their sexuality? Heck no, gay men get it too. Single fathers of teen daughters are also subjected to it, unfortunately. There’s a lot of fucked up people in this country. Still. Shocking, isn’t it?
Yet, in the case of defamation, it also happens to business people and employees with regard to their professional reputations. The difference is that the stigma surrounding false accusations and unethical behavior imprints less deeply. Look, people were even prepared to elect a guy who couldn’t manage a freakin’ casino without it going bankrupt! Obviously, even that kind of failure can be recovered from.
Wrong. All I’m saying is that when someone says something publicly that damages the reputation (or even calls it into question) of a person who takes issue with such a statement, that when called to the carpet, it is the defamer who has to back his statement up with evidence; not that the victim be required to defend himself or herself. Doesn’t matter what the nature of the defamation is or the gender of either of the parties.
Really? So all those pundits who parroted the statement and even expanded upon it recognized the unreasonableness of that claim? All those ordinary Americans who further disparaged the reputation of a woman they don’t even know were also reasonable people? Could have fooled me. Did his listeners or conservative pundits correct him or actually dismiss those statements as rhetorical? Am I to understand that the ones who did are reasonable and the ones who didn’t are unreasonable. And neither makes a bit of difference if the publicity surrounding such remarks have a detrimental impact on Ms. Fluke?
I’m not the one who made the statement, so I don’t see why I should have to quantify it.
As I see it, the relevant facts are:
Do you disagree with any of those points, or do you think there’s something else relevant?
Not only did he most certainly call her a slut and a prostitute- he simply assumed that she was promiscuous at all! Birth control must be taken every day regardless of sexual activity, and if you miss a day, you take two. The amount of birth control taken has NOTHING to do with the amount of sex one is having, therefore Limbaugh is simply assuming that because she needs birth control, Fluke is having sex all the time. He called her a whore because he doesnt know how birth control works, not because he actually knows her sexual history.
He is an idiot.
But is he an idiot who could face a lawsuit? Sure, anyone with a lawyer could sue, but does Sandra Fluke have a case? We’ve debated Limbaugh’s “slut” comment to death and back. What legal barriers are there to Fluke suing Limbaugh for being called a prostitute? Or just for Limbaugh’s utter falsehoods about the content of her testimony. He spent more time calling her names than it would take to read her testimony.
Well, as Katie84 pointed out above, a reasonable Rush Limbaugh listener could make the false assumption that the birth control pills must be consumed with each act of intercourse, or that she was using condoms for those occurences too.
I almost follow this line of reasoning: the enlightened thing to do would be to embrace the definition and use it to shame one’s opponents, reducing their potency of their insults. The issue that this entails for a liberal Catholic (with their intricate political maneuvering) within the system is that it carries serious risk of excommunication and I’m assuming that future Catholic employers may not look favorably on that.
Her testimony was actually very well crafted within the outlines of what is acceptable within Catholic theology as far as I’m aware and carried some emotional salience too. While I’m an advocate of libel reform (and I recall watching a video where Christopher Hitchens says that there was an injunction on referring to the BT tower that he received in the UK, so he couldn’t even mention that as anything other than “exhibit G” or something)… It appears that this would be her only recourse, since the perpetuation of the outmoded conception of female worth based on chastity is already fostered by the Church and Limbaugh. It’d also help dispel the ad hom notion that people cannot argue forcefully and dispassionately.
There’d have to be motive, which I can’t really think of: the times priests and monks commanded political power was probably when they were still permitted to be married or prior to the time where concerns of this nature were not handled internally (which they think is for all eternity). If there was ample evidence then they’d probably be excommunicated and thus without funds to defend themselves, if they revealed it privately it may be covered under confessional privilege.
Motive seems easy:
I lol’d at number 5… For 4, they can remain deacons (I guess that would fit the definition of throwing a monkeywrench). My family knew a guy in the seminary that apparently had a major issue with clerical celibacy which caused him to wonder from parish to parish.
It is strange that the Church hasn’t had to field off any claims of infidelity with consenting adults (well, none that were successfully contended in court). For 2, it seems to be one of the less plausible choices for claiming child support and for 1. I guess any women that knew a priest well enough would have to risk excommunication? Still doesn’t rule out 3, but perhaps a court wouldn’t even take such a case?
All I can find is this, heh.
Incidentally, there’s no reason why we should get hung up on “Slut” and “Prostitute”. Limbaugh made 46 personal attacks after all:
http://mediamatters.org/research/201203050022
Sandra Fluke made no mention of her sex life.
Question for the legal eagles, tia
I seriously doubt whether Miss Fluke will sue, mostly because I figure a Georgetown law student is probably bright and has access to savvy mentors. It’s not in her self interest and it won’t promote most good causes particularly well, at least in practice. I trust the ACLU would have worries. Setting that aside, here’s a question: as defamation involves harm to reputation, wouldn’t some sort of commissioned public polling survey be in order? Ask a bunch of dittoheads about what they think of Sandra Fluke and I would think that you could establish harm to reputation. I’m not sure what the damages would be though: Ms. Fluke probably suffered some social harm, but I suspect most (not all) future employers and suitors would be grown up about it.
Let’s make a dreal … for one day and one day only, you get to make all the rules and I get to apply them.
Actually, I thought the bigger problem here is his claim that she said she was having so much sex she couldn’t afford it. Which is a claim of fact that is demonstrably untrue, and is not also subject to discussions of how much sex that might be.
I don’t see the difference. In fact, it’s arguable that calling Obama a socialist is just as or even more harmful as a way to malign a person’s reputation.
First of all, this kind of charge is an accusation of a crime and one that is largely considered extremely reprehensible. It’s on a completely different level than calling someone a “slut” in the context of a political discussion of funding birth control – (1) It’s not a crime to be a slut, (2) It’s not all that bad to be considered a slut, (3) “Slut” doesn’t have any specific meaning, (4) It’s clear from the context that Limbaugh is speaking hyperbolically and with reference to a political disagreement and is not making a specific factual claim about Fluke that is meant to be taken literally.
And I’m telling you that this is an infringement of the alleged defamer’s First Amendment rights. There isn’t a similar constitutional right on the other end of the balance.
You take a certain amount of risk when you enter the public arena. Obama gets called a socialist and worse. Fluke gets called a slut. Both are opinions, and politically motivated ones at that.
Exactly. Rush’s lie was not “Sandra Fluke is a prostitute and a slut”. The lie was “Sandra Fluke said ‘X’ which proves she is a slut and a prostitute.” She did not say “X” but in fact said “Y” which is completely different.
:smack:
Yes–it’s the claim I’ve been making all along, and I can’t even get it right.
I don’t agree.
While it is true that she did not say anything about her sex life, it was not a crazy leap: she said that “WE, as students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens…” as a result of the contraception policy.
It is not a crazy inference to assume she wished to include herself.