Hal, Liskula, Dylan, Kyle, Jackie, Bill & Co.

Hal Turner is not a nutzi. (Or an FBI informant.)

Liskula Cohen is not a skank. (Or a whore.)

Dylan Lewis is not annoying.

Kyle Sandilands is not vile, and Jackie O is not a ‘ho’.

(Bill White is not a nutzi neither.)

    White to stay in jail pending transfer to Roanoke
    WDBJ7.com
    July 31, 2009

    Admitted neo-Nazi Bill White will stay in jail until he’s returned to face federal criminal charges in Roanoke. A judge denied bond for White Friday morning in Chicago. White has been in federal custody since last year when he was charged in Chicago with using his website [overthrow.com] and other methods to encourage violence. Later, prosecutors in Roanoke added similar charges. Last week, Judge Lynn Adelman threw out the Chicago case citing freedom of speech protections. Adelman wrote “an intimidating context alone does not remove the protection of the first amendment.” White’s Chicago lawyer, Chris Shepherd, argued Friday that White should be released on bond as he awaits trial in Roanoke. “No one’s ever been harmed by Mr. White,” Shepherd told News-7. “He’s spent nine months in jail for a crime he did not commit.” Shepherd said it is uncertain how long it might take federal authorities to bring White back to Roanoke. He said it could take several weeks, if not months.

Then again…

Bridget McManus has some interesting thoughts on the subject of celebrities Bedevilled by their blunders (The Age, August 24, 2009 — also Why we love to forgive misbehaving celebrities, The Sydney Morning Herald), thoughts which provide a handy pretext for me to write this post.

So. What do imprisoned neo-Nazi Hal Turner, New Yawk fashion model Liskula Cohen, Nova 100 FM DJ Dylan Lewis, 2Day FM DJs Kyle Sandilands and Jacqueline Ellen Marie Last O’Neil Henderson and imprisoned neo-Nazi Bill White have in common?

All are ‘celebrities’ — of one sort or another.

All have had the indescribable honour of appearing on my blog.

All exist both in and on the margins of reality, and the intersection of popular culture, politics, (new) media and the law. And all have recently been bedevilled by blunders.

Of the cast and crew of The Hal, Liskula, Dylan, Kyle, Jackie, Bill & Co. Show, the two most exceptional are Hal and Bill. Both Hal and Bill are in jail awaiting trial, accused of various crimes, but most significantly of being responsible for issuing threats to kill or injure judges and juries connected to some recent US court cases.

Bill & Hal

A recent summary of one of Bill’s legal battles is detailed in ‘Online threats to juror are protected speech: Judge dismisses indictment on free speech grounds’, David Ziemer, Wisconsin Law Journal, July 28, 2009. In essence: “Case: U.S. v. White, No. 08-CR-851. Issue: Can a defendant be criminally charged for posting a juror’s address on the internet? Holding: No. Where the post does not incite imminent lawless action, it is protected by the First Amendment.”

As for Hal: ‘Internet Radio Talk Show Host Hal Turner Arrested for Threatening Three Federal Appeals Court Judges in Chicago Over Recent Decision Upholding Handgun Bans’, July 28, 2009:

Hal Turner, an intermittent internet radio talk show host and blogger, was arrested today by FBI agents at his home in North Bergen, N.J., on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb.

Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2 handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

Liskula

“I’m tall, I’m blond, I’ve been modeling for many years, and people get jealous,” she said. “If I had to deal with everyone who is jealous, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.”

Liskula Cohen used to be known as a model; she’s now known as 1) a “skank” and 2) as the person responsible for bringing legal action (January 2009) against the Google corporation, forcing it — by way of a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden — to ‘be evil’, and to provide her (and her law-talking guy) with the email address of a blogger responsible for calling her a “skank”. According to Liskula, the email address enabled her to immediately identify the person responsible for the offensive (‘Skanks in NYC’) blog: Rosemary Port, a fellow New York nightclubber with whom Liskula had previously had words.

Currently, it appears that, having established who was responsible for calling her names, Liskula has dropped defamation proceedings. Rosemary, on the other hand, is now threatening to sue Google for failing to protect her privacy (Google faces $15 million lawsuit for releasing blogger information in model row, The Daily Telegraph, August 24, 2009).

Port won’t win — one assumes — but even if she does, it’s a piss in the ocean for Google. More troubling for bloggers who wish to remain (relatively) anonymous — to be precise: those who wish to blog using Google’s Blogger and a traceable email address — is the extent to which the case sets a legal precedent (within US jurisdiction).

Beyond this, I wonder what the implications are for the individuals concerned. For Cohen, the allegation that she is a “skank” (inter alia) will now — presumably — always be associated with her name. This was, obviously, not her intention. In fact, quite the reverse: Cohen was seeking to redress alleged defamation (harmful lies). Having also, apparently, decided not to pursue damages against Port, it could be argued that Cohen is now actually in a worse position, with regards her reputation, than she was before bringing legal action against Google. As Rosemary Port has stated, “By going to the press, she defamed herself. Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it. That was before it became a spectacle.”

This kinda thing is also sometimes referred to as The Streisand Effect.

See also : It’s not about freedom of speech, Gail J. Cohen, Law Times, August 24, 2009 | NYS Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden is an elderly, mentally-ill skank (in my opinion), Daniel Radosh, Radosh.net, August 19, 2009.

Dylan

As noted previously, a few weeks ago I was threatened with being sued for defamation by Dylan Lewis’s manager Mark Klemens. This was because of some unkind remarks I’d made about Dylan to the effect that I did not find him to be anywhere near as entertaining as his PR company might otherwise suggest. Curiously, while I didn’t accuse Dylan of being psychotic, or a liar, or a skank, or a ho, his own bio on Nova FM states that he is a prostitute and a gimp.

To anyone but a law-talking guy, this would probably be interpreted as being an attempt at something called ‘humour’. That is, a reasonable person might conclude that such claims — whatever their other qualities — are (were) not to be taken literally.

Or not.

In any case, a post on my blog that, in January 2008, when searching for the term “Dylan Lewis”, appeared on a Google search somewhere on the fourth or fifth (?) page, has been supplanted by another post on the same subject that now appears on the first page.

D’oh!

Kyle & Jackie

Kyle Sandilands and Jacqueline Ellen Marie Last O’Neil Henderson — ‘O’ — are back on the air. This is because Kyle is a “radio rebel”, a “lovable rogue” who “tells it like he sees it” and whose “no holes barred approach and passion for uncovering and championing new talent” makes him “a leader of the ever changing world of multimedia” (and yes, the original quote does read ‘holes’ not ‘holds’). Jackie O, on the other hand, is “one of Australia’s most successful and high profile radio co-host[s], interviewer[s], television presenter[s] and magazine columnist[s]” — still.

Point being: money talks, bullshit walks, and for so long as The Kyle & Jackie O Show brings ratings in key demographics = advertising revenue = profit, they are untouchable. The only standard business has to defend is teh bottom line (Austereo chairman forced to defend on-air standards, The Age, August 24, 2009).

Bonus!

Diarrhoeal diseases account for 18 per cent of deaths among children under five years of age worldwide, or an estimated 1.7 million child deaths every year – making them the second most common cause of child deaths globally.

Diarrhea is caused by ingesting certain bacteria, viruses or parasites that may be spread by water, food, utensils, hands, and flies. Most diarrhoea-related deaths in children are due to dehydration – the loss of large quantities of water and electrolytes (sodium, potassium and bicarbonate) from the body in liquid stool.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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