Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  These are the facts behind the lawsuit that the jury heard, and decided so quickly, last week.  In 2008 Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska but largely unknown outside of that state, suddenly found herself catapulted into national prominence when the Republican nominee for President, John McCain, asked her to join his ticket. She agreed, and was on the ballot that November as a Vice Presidential nominee.  The McCain-Palin ticket lost. After the election, though, Palin hoped to retain her national prominence and to that end she formed a political action committees, SarahPAC. Only one fact about that PAC is really pertinent here, Its website at some point thereafter adopted a graphic image of a ballistic crosshair superimposed on the 8th congressional district of Arizona, then represented by Gabrielle Giffords. The image of course was intended to convey the general idea that Giffords should be a metaphorical "target" for Republican energies, so that a Republican could replace...

 Five quick points: 1) I have no belief as to whether anyone within the Gibson family is racist, nor does that matter as to the following propositions; 2) The Gibsons' owned a bakery and were sensibly concerned about shoplifting-- from people of any race, 3) The Gibsons' won their defamation lawsuit against Oberlin College, which AS AN INSTITUTION had defamed them over a confrontation over an alleged shoplifting; 4) Appeals have been exhausted -- Oberlin should pay up. 5) The black Oberlin students whom the Gibsons thought were shoplifting eventually pleaded guilty to ... shoplifting.  This has become something more than the usual town-and-gown tension. 

  This illustration has nothing to do with the following text. I was playing with the "insert image" tool here -- the blogger folks have changed their format a bit. And that is the image I came up with. What the heck. I'll keep it.  I loved Borat's first "movie film," but I think I have had my fill of Borat and will probably skip this one.  Also, given the mess that one can charitably call my country's politics, and what I've heard of the Giuliani scene, it would probably cut too close to the bone this time. So I'll give him a "thanks, but no."  It is funny how Giuliani is talking tough about a lawsuit, though. That's not going to happen. Not in the USA, which can still boast a system that resists the attempts the efforts of the publicly powerful to silence their critics through defamation suits. I haven't heard that even the three Trumpets of the Supreme Court have any interest in erasing the line of precedent that began with ...