Groan

The InstaPundit is shocked. Dan Drezner is appalled. Don Luskin is threatening legal action against Atrios? Since I said a few days ago that he had gone too far with the "anti-Semitism" thing, I suppose I can just hide behind my earlier story.

But wait! What had I said about the stalking thing? Staring at my posts, and the various comments, I extract this:

I am taking Ms. Grey's side on one point - I thought Don Luskin's account of his sojourn into the heart of darkness could have been a minor comedy classic. Playing it for doom and gloom was, well, gloomy. And doomed.

And, a bit later:

"I continue to think [the stalking debate is] pretty funny."

However, lawsuits aren't funny. Even if some lawyer has advised him that he has a case, this cannot be the best way to approach it. Nor is this likely to be an effective tactic in demonstrating that Prof. Krugman has lost perspective and judgement.

Fortunately, there is always over-reach from the other side to bail us out of a jam. Atrios wants everyone to de-link Don Luskin. Soon enough, we predict this will evolve to "de-link anyone who links to Luskin", a la the Little Green Football/Rittenhouse Review laugh fest a while back. Whether we reach the third level is anyone's guess.

Whether the best way to combat the stifling of opinions is to stifle opinions remains an open question.

UPDATE: Back in 1997, Clinton acolyte Sidney Blumenthal sued ur-blogger Matt Drudge for $30 million, in what some thought might be an attempt to silence and intimidate. We have no doubt that a younger Atrios was horrified by Mr. Blumenthal's behavior.

But time heals all wounds, and only a few years later, Atrios was hawking Mr. Blumenthal's book. And the lawsuit was settled, too - Mr. Blumenthal agreed to pay $2,500 to Matt Drudge to let the mess die.

I will take his current call for a boycott just that seriously.

MORE: This is explanatory, but not exculpatory - as a casual reader of Don Luskin's site, I have not noticed Atrios to be a particular target of his ire. OTOH, Don Luskin described a recent Hannity and Colmes interview in which he gave a "no comment" to the question of whether he would sue Prof. Krugman. And here is the Jan. 17 Paul Krugman column mentioned on the show.

My guesses - Atrios is collateral damage; Luskin has sued Krugman (or will); Luskin has been advised that he should also sue significant media which propagated the "stalker" slur; and the point is to deny Krugman's team a "selective outrage" defense, in which Krugman's attorneys argue that if Luskin were truly bothered, he would not be suing only Krugman.

And while I am on a roll - can we stop already with this notion that this lawsuit is about "the not veiled threat to "out" me as the real purpose", to quote Atrios. I have seen no evidence (hey, show me, maybe I missed it) that Luskin has any interest whatsoever in outing Atrios; I understood the letter from Luskin's attorney as a not so thinly veiled attempt to get Atrios to remove an offensive post.

More BTW - Since Atrios has admitted to having editorial discretion on this point, isn't Law Prof Jack Balkin wildly unconvincing? Here is the key excerpt:

Section 230 states that " no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

This does not mean that bloggers are immune from libels they themselves write. It means that they are immune from (for example) libels published in their comments section (if they have one) because these comments are written by other people and the blogger is merely providing a space for them to be published. Congress wanted to treat operators of chatrooms and other interactive computer services differently from letters to the editor columns in a local newspaper.

So if bloggers defame somebody, they can still be sued for what they say, just not for what someone else who publishes on the blogger's site says.

Emphasis added. Now, I accept that Atrios has a plausible defense; however, to assert that his role is not at all comparable to a "Letter to the Editor" function, and essentially comparable to a chat room operator, strikes me as untested.

In the case before us, Luskin did contact Atrios privately, Atrios seemed to admit to editorial discretion but chose not to exercise it, and the nasty letter followed.

It seems clear what the two sides would argue; the notion that Luskin must lose on this point strikes me as open. The "public figure" argument, OTOH, looks like a mountain too high to climb.

UPDATE: A "mega-ditto" for Roger Simon.

Comments

[Nathan Newman]

While delinking may or may not be the right response to Luskin, it's not "stifling opinions"-- it's a form of free speech itself.

Using the coercive force of the state-- a lawsuit -- to strip someone of their anonymity and make them shut up is "stifling dissent."

I wouldn't equate them.

[HH]

Delinking is akin to a boycott. The day Drudge takes down his link to Bill O'Reilly (who went as far as to say Drudge should be killed) then I'll take Atrios' nonsense on that seriously.

[HH]

Damn... you said it better than I could in your update. Yes, the better comparison is Drudge/Blumenthal (and what if Atrios actually is Blumenthal?).

[George]

Your reference to the year-or-so-ago controversy involving Rittenhouse Review and Little Green Footballs has a certain resonance in terms of the current controversy beyond the point you were making. The gasbag that runs the RR currently has a post up on the atrios/Luskin matter, and he is all atwitter about conservatives that resort to bringing in the awful lawyers. I'm reminded of the nasty and verbose threats this same gasbag made about eighteen months ago to the lady that then ran a blog called, something like, Letter from Manhattan...a Diane (something, I think). He went on for thousands of words threatening to sue her for some comment she had made on her blog. What hypocrites these people become when it's their ox being gored.

[Mithras]

From the Salon link: "Matt Drudge ... wrote on Aug. 10 in his widely read Drudge Report that Blumenthal, a senior advisor to President Clinton, 'has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up.' Drudge quoted one anonymous source as saying the story of Blumenthal's alleged wife-beating 'has been in circulation for years.' He quoted another unnamed source as saying that 'there are court records of Blumenthal's violence against his wife.'"

Those are specific allegations of fact about criminal actions. Atrios linked Luskin's site to the words "Diary of a Stalker" after NRO had run a Luskin article entitled "We Stalked. He Balked." If you are unable to distinguish the difference between the two situations, you have a problem.

[TM]

Mithras:

Oh, I have lots of problems, then. Blumenthal also sued after Drudge had retracted the article, which he did very quickly. Atrios seems to have admitted that he might exert editorial control over his commentrs, but has chosen not to.

And Luskin is basing his complaint on comments made in the post, not the post itself. I haven't read all the comments, but one fellow picked out his candidate for libel, and it was ceetainly offensive.

So, like most analogies, the Blumenthal example is not perfect. Rather than get hung up on the inevitable differences, I have picked upon what may be a few similarities - Drudge was an annoying political opponent of Blumenthal; Blumenthal initiated a lawsuit that was not given a lot of chance to succeed; lots of folks thought the goal was to silence Drudge; and, plenty of folks on the left had no problem with it.

Since legally, Blumenthal went nowhere, your objection seems to amount to, "Blumenthal had a good reason to be annoyed, and Luskin doesn't". Fine, thanks for sharing your opinion.

[TM]

Hey, Nathan, thanks for stopping by. As to "i wouldn't equate them", well, I am not sure I do - I object to both, but not equally. This lawsuit notion is clearly the less appropriate of the two ideas.

That said, on the general concept of individuals making free choices versus indivuduals enlisting the coercive power of the state, it depends on the situation. An angry mob of (uncoreced but concerned) people marching down the street to get me, or picketing my store, might, in some eyes, represent a triumph of empowerment and democracy. But I might call the cops anyway, and maybe I should.

[Brad DeLong]

>>Fortunately, there is always over-reach from the other side to bail us out of a jam. Atrios wants everyone to de-link Don Luskin. Soon enough, we predict this will evolve to "de-link anyone who links to Luskin", a la the Little Green Football/Rittenhouse Review laugh fest a while back.<<

How about linking to Luskin only when he has something intelligent and accurate to say? That would cut *way* down on the links to Luskin, after all...

:-)