Sigh. Reductionist thinking again. Yes, of course, if you literally say “small penis” the plaintiff would rightfully cite this history.
But it’s not meant to be taken literally, like those are magic words. You say “he failed upwards, funded by family wealth and connections, despite everyone thinking he was an idiot who could barely string a sentence together”
The point is to emphasize, even exaggerate, low-status negative qualities.
If you accuse someone (not me) of having a small penis (I don't) they (not me) don't have to show that they (not me) have a large penis (like me). Just the accusation they made (to you, not me) is slander enough. But I'd gladly drop-trousers in a court.
A Jewish comedian made a joke about how jews (only in the US*) were offended that Ferengi in Star Trek were based on them - "why would we assume these ugly greedy people are _us_?"
*Outside the US, it looks like the Ferengi are mocking American capitalist culture.
I never knew about this complaint either, the connection never occured to me at the time as the capitalist cristicism seemed par for the course for a post-scarcity Federation. I don't understand this knee-jerk self -owning behavior. It's like that bizarre tweet by the Israeli government about the photo of an IDF soldier destroying a Christian ornament. The gov. official insisted that the physical features of the soldier contained so many antisemitic tropes that it had to be AI. Thus, the guy was inadvertantly described as the ugliest person on the planet in excruciating detail by his own government.
An example might be some person A saying "only an idiot with this set of very specific negative attributes would do this thing". And then person B came out in the public saying they had been slandered by person A, thus indirectly admitting to having those very specific negative attirbutes.
Basically if person A invokes something like the small penis rule, it's often better for person B to stay quiet to avoid 對號入座.
I'm always fascinated by these tricks of game theory.
e.g. in business school, the dean of the undergraduate school had this story:
"When I was a practicing lawyer working on wills and estates, people would often ask me to cut someone completely out of their will.
I would always say that a better option was to write something like 'To my daughter Susan, I leave $1,000. She always said that she wanted to be financially independent from me so this is an amount to show her I lover her.'
Clients would always think this would send the wrong message and I would replay:
'No, no. If Susan fights the will and says she should have gotten more, the judge will say: but she clearly left you something and pointed out that she loved you AND took your wishes into account' "
I wish there was a book or collection of these types of tricks to study.
My estate lawyer told me that, to prevent challenges, he advised clients to add a clause directing that anyone contesting the will would be excluded completely from the estate.
Wouldnt it just be better to have a lefal system that enforced the contract without extra bs? Lawyers would be unhappy as their wages normalized but that would be a large benefit to society as well
I wonder if the Catch Me if You Can guy counts. He apparently lied about a lot of his adventures as a scam artist, making him more of a fabulist.
However, if anyone taken in by his stories were to complain publicly (say, a book publisher or something), they'd be admitting not only to being a rube, but a rube to a liar who had already claimed publicly to be a scam artist. Even worse, that scam would be real and count as a success, restoring the scam artist's tarnished reputation from fabulist back to bona fide scam artist.
> For a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two
Sorry this argument makes no sense. If I (or any average reader) read a passage dissing a public figure (not me), which describes them with a small penis, I wouldn't consider the description as not fitting - I have no way of telling how big their penis is.
If the public person in question came forward, and read the passage, he could successfully argue, that readers of the book would have no information about the size of his package, and thus that would be irrelevant to the argument. So him suing the author based on this would not mean he admits his dong is small.
Maybe it doesn't have to be a literal small penis? Maybe it could be describing the person in such a way that it's clear they are the one being described, but then including something about the character that they wouldn't want to risk people thinking is true.
After Rick Beato recently twisted the blade hard on how musically inept the NYT music review panel is, this level of legal ignorance pales in comparison.
19 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 35.8 ms ] threadBut it’s not meant to be taken literally, like those are magic words. You say “he failed upwards, funded by family wealth and connections, despite everyone thinking he was an idiot who could barely string a sentence together”
The point is to emphasize, even exaggerate, low-status negative qualities.
> A jury in New Mexico awarded $412 million to a man who sued over what he said were unnecessary erectile dysfunction shots that decimated his penis
On the one hand, now you're famous for having a dick that doesn't work, on the other hand, $412 million.
https://amp.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article296...
*Outside the US, it looks like the Ferengi are mocking American capitalist culture.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8D%E8%99%9F%E5%85%A5%E...
An example might be some person A saying "only an idiot with this set of very specific negative attributes would do this thing". And then person B came out in the public saying they had been slandered by person A, thus indirectly admitting to having those very specific negative attirbutes.
Basically if person A invokes something like the small penis rule, it's often better for person B to stay quiet to avoid 對號入座.
e.g. in business school, the dean of the undergraduate school had this story:
"When I was a practicing lawyer working on wills and estates, people would often ask me to cut someone completely out of their will.
I would always say that a better option was to write something like 'To my daughter Susan, I leave $1,000. She always said that she wanted to be financially independent from me so this is an amount to show her I lover her.'
Clients would always think this would send the wrong message and I would replay:
'No, no. If Susan fights the will and says she should have gotten more, the judge will say: but she clearly left you something and pointed out that she loved you AND took your wishes into account' "
I wish there was a book or collection of these types of tricks to study.
However, if anyone taken in by his stories were to complain publicly (say, a book publisher or something), they'd be admitting not only to being a rube, but a rube to a liar who had already claimed publicly to be a scam artist. Even worse, that scam would be real and count as a success, restoring the scam artist's tarnished reputation from fabulist back to bona fide scam artist.
Sorry this argument makes no sense. If I (or any average reader) read a passage dissing a public figure (not me), which describes them with a small penis, I wouldn't consider the description as not fitting - I have no way of telling how big their penis is.
If the public person in question came forward, and read the passage, he could successfully argue, that readers of the book would have no information about the size of his package, and thus that would be irrelevant to the argument. So him suing the author based on this would not mean he admits his dong is small.