Comments on: Which Of These Jokes Is More Offensive?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:00:08 +0000

Bobby, I can't address your comments on Ted Frank, as I don't know the man. In any case, this is not his weblog nor is he the subject of this post. Perhaps if you wish to discuss your thoughts on Mr. Frank you should do so at a site where he can answer you, such as Overlawyered.

As to the Times' use of Cyrus Sanai (and vice versa) to generate controversy concerning Judge Kozinski, I find it interesting that whenever the topic comes up here, we invariably receive a traffic spike from new visitors who post rambling ad hominem comments that don't address the subject. The only similar events I can recall are an ongoing comment flamewar in one of our posts about a surgeon who has poor judgment, and a summer invasion of slavophile bigots who had an axe to grind against a New York congressman.

The web is a funny place.

By: Bobby

Bobby — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:47:47 +0000

Almost any who file a law suit in federal court is one engaged in vexatious litigation by the Clerk clique of Ted Frank, the AEI, and the Federalist Society, as they want federal courts to be almost reserved for big corporations to sort out their commercial disputes. They–the outhouse corp cartel– get paid on meter runs at a big clip per hour.
Yes, they(Frank et al) reserve that status to lawyers for Americas–persons– of like the Taliban, or the Chamber(CC) head jokes about: the first thing we do is kill all the trial lawyers(for American citizens), his sick twisted joke, if not his mindset.
So, it is no surprise all the smut promoters rushing to the side of Sir Alex Kozionski, the wired- in wack job, who seems to find plenty of time for his sicko pursuits, or in the words of his political wife: Alex is into funny. Ha Ha.
Or, we are now in danger of losing any judge who has a sense of humor that is not a parrot job of Ted Frank's twisted
mind.
Yes, isn't censorship of his clique rather widespread, as evidenced by how they treat other's views.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:14:55 +0000

So just to be clear… you're comparing lawyers to the Taliban?

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:08:33 +0000

So far, I am not personally offended by any of the jokes I have seen from this email list. Some seem tiresome. That's hardly a crime.

A few thoughts:

I would be tempted to call this a Gary Hart situation, if Kozinski were an executive or legislative official rather than a judicial one. Hart, you will recall, carried out an affair and dared the media to catch him. The arguable point — that a politician's private affair is nobody's business — was swamped by the recognition that someone who nails Donna Rice on the side and then dares the media to catch him whilst running a presidential campaign simply lacks the judgment to be in the same room as The Button.

Kozinski's conduct is not in the same ballpark, but it's in the same sport. Whether or not you think that the modern attitude towards such jokes reflects Victorian prudery, it's rash for a public figure to send them to a seemingly indifferently culled list that includes reporters. This result was somewhere between possible and probable. That reflects questionable judgment — though perhaps not the sort of questionable judgment that matters for a judge.

I agree that the LA Times is probably being led about by a vexatious litigant. They ought to view information from him with suspicion. They ought to disclose that the complainant driving this is a litigious nut. Here's the more complicated question: is this newsworthy? I'm not as confident in answering no to that as some critics. I do, however recognize that the LA Times can effectively manufacture newsworthiness; they can more plausibly argue that this story is newsworthy because it followed the hoo-ha about the images on the judge's servers, even if that story was questionably newsworthy to begin with.

As an aside, the thirty minutes Judge Kozinski once spent chewing on me during an oral argument in which I was only supposed to get ten minutes ranks as one of the highlights of my career to me, in terms of intellectual and professional challenge.

By: Judge Kozinski’s email joke list

Judge Kozinski’s email joke list — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:03:50 +0000

[...] The L.A. Times invites readers’ dudgeon about the judge’s private emailing of tasteless jokes to friends. Patterico and Althouse take somewhat different views of the supposed offense. The West Coast newspaper, writes James Taranto, “has been drawn into a vexatious litigant’s smear campaign against Kozinski“, and Ted has called the paper’s coverage “appalling“. More: Obbie, Patrick @ Popehat. [...]