The OL "tribe" and the Tribal Mindset

[Robert Campbell]

Yeah, Mr. Perigo's latest threats are beyond boneheaded.

When Kenny embarrassed himself with his wild threats to sue, he dropped off the thread and changed the subject.

What's Mr. Perigo doing to do?

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Yeah, Mr. Perigo's latest threats are beyond boneheaded.

When Kenny embarrassed himself with his wild threats to sue, he dropped off the thread and changed the subject.

What's Mr. Perigo doing to do?

Robert Campbell

He's probably combining drinking with posting as I did before I stopped drinking several weeks ago. I used to have to come back and delete and modify some of my silly statements. A minor reason I stopped drinking is because Michael drastically shortened the editing time-frame to one hour instead of the previous several days. I only drank in the evening after supper, but I knew I'd have no chance of matching my Mother's 95 years (as of yesterday) and counting if I didn't stop. The not-to-drink will power goes out the window after the first drink. Now I don't miss it at all, but appreciate how drinking can trap some people who find it next to impossible to stop. That's because they are physiologically trapped needing alcohol to counteract too much poison released by their livers used by the body to neutralize the poison of alcohol. When I took chemistry 1960-1961 the nonsense first aid instruction for lab work was use an acid to counteract an alkaline in your eyes and vice versa. Same principle. Now it's use simple running water for ten minutes.

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

Brant,

Now, of course, Mr. Perigo is going to sue you as well

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Now, of course, Mr. Perigo is going to sue you as well

Robert Campbell

Heck, I don't think he's an alcoholic. I think alcohol can't resist him.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

I've been mulling it over, and I think I've finally hit on what has been the point of Pigero's behavior over the past several years, as well as that of other Objectivists who often share his highly agitated emotionalism: they're trying to make Rand look less like a frightful mess by being much bigger frightful messes in comparison.

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I was looking around on my hard disk for some images for something else I was doing, and lookie lookie what I found: a picture of James Kilbourne, Barbara Branden and Objectivist Liar Lindsay Perigo, this last looking mighty happy to have some sauce to suck on. This was during a SoloHQ event in 2005 or 2006 (I don't recall the date, but it can easily be looked up).

Barbara stated that at this time (when Jabba and her were on speaking terms), she rarely saw him without a glass of wine in his hand. Ever since, he and his minions have hollered that there is no evidence of this, yada yada yada.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Looks like, at the very least, Jabba certainly liked to have his picture taken that way...

Heh...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

2005.

--Brant

[9thdoctor]

Robert: Jabba can ban you anytime, right? I think he doesn’t because you give him an outlet for his rage. I have to admit I do find entertainment value in following it, but it’s on a public forum so everyone looks bad to the newbies. You’ve stated your reasons for sticking around there, I respect your view, but maybe this will resonate:

“he heard Francisco's voice, asking him quietly in the ballroom of this building, yet asking it also here and now: "Who is the guiltiest man in this room?" He heard his own answer of the past: "I suppose—James Taggart?" and Francisco's voice saying without reproach: "No, Mr. Rearden, it's not James Taggart,"—but here, in this room and this moment, his mind answered: "I am."”

Substitute Jabba for James naturally. I do get a kick out of the references to Jabba’s Palace, FWIW my conception was that LP is both Jabba and the Rancor, a dual identity like Tyler Durden in Fight Club. Now how to work in the Sarlacc? And the pig-faced guards (Gamorreans, I looked it up)? Ah, the riches yet unexplored.

A couple other (hopefully) amusing items I’ve come up with but haven't found opportunity to share:

PARVE – designates food is Kosher in real life (also spelled Pareve). As an acronymic neologism for the Objectivist subculture, I propose the following:

Peikoff Approved Rand Veneration Effort. Burns and Heller’s books aren’t Parve, PARC of course is. Careful, you may choke on it.

LARVAE – Linz Approved Rank Vicious Acrimonious Eggheads.

Neoteny is a characteristic trait of the species. Diet: SLOP, naturally.

Having never posted on SLOP why do I target them this way? I consider Branden-Bashing to be the number one gateway drug to Objectivist evasion and irrationality. Coming across a forum that discourages it ended the Rip Van Winkle I did after MDOP faded away. That OL is then smeared as a home of pedophile apologists is a vicious package deal: absence of Branden smears = Pedophilia. Pathetic, sickening, and childish in execution. Fire with fire anyone?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just deleted a post by Ted Keer. It was exactly the kind of in-your-face childish insults I do not seek for OL (such as telling someone to his face he is a creep, embarrassment, fool, hypocrite, wallows in the gutter yada yada yada like he did in the deleted post).

And I was the one being insulted!

Anyway, this is not Solo Passion and this kind of bullying behavior is not welcome here (although he is not banned).

If anyone is interested, he has entered in contact with me a few times off line demanding that I intervene with this poster or that according to his dictates. And he has done this in the same breath he has written terrible things about me on other forums. Obviously I don't comply and the negative crap he has posted elsewhere is of little value to me.

But I don't run this forum by private message pressure.

Maybe he will be happier where he has more control over folks, since, judging from his behavior, that seems to be a value to him.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

I saw Ted’s post. This thread is in the Rants forum, so there certainly is truth in advertising. I didn’t get his beef though, you won’t delete a (dumb) reference to him by Jeff Riggenbach on the Peron thread, and then there was something about a Wikipedia TOS violation. It seemed misdirected and totally out of proportion, so what did you really do MSK? Confess!

[jeffrey smith]

Technical notes:

1a) the fact that material is published on a site under the control of X does not mean that X could not sue for libel based on that material. In some cases, material which the libelled person himself, but not the libeller, made known to other people, or material contained in a private communication from the libeller to the libellee, were allowed to be sued upon.

1b) an allegation that a person is has a drinking problem can, in varying contexts, be libelous. In this instance, however, given that the allegation has been made by others previously, and is already generally known, the context would probably be lacking.

2) Parve, by itself,does not mean that an item of food is kosher. It means, rather, that the item of kosher food contains neither dairy (cholov, milchig) nor meat (bashar, fleishig), and can therefore be eaten with either. This is in the context of the law which forbids eating dairy with or less than six hours after eating food that contains (kosher, of course) meat, and eating meat with or less than one hour after food that contains dairy. (The time difference is based on the Talmudic assumption that the body takes much longer to digest meat than diary food.) Apple sauce is a good example of something that is parve.

Jeff S.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

LOL...

I actually think the real problem is that I don't let cliques form to dictate policy (i.e., rule over other posters) on OL. People who have tried it usually get royally pissed at me.

What few private messages I do get from posters are generally of an administrative or intellectual nature. Once in a while there will be a tidbit of gossip, but it is rare. And then a sporadic attempt at control, which I tend to frustrate right at the starting gate. There is certainly nothing anywhere near a backstage clique operating here, although there is a small effort by some individuals on other forums to paint OL as such.

People interact here because they like talking to each other, not because they are preaching, controlling what ideas or topics or views others can express, or whatever. (Within the guidelines, of course.)

That's the way I want to keep it.

Try being an intellectual traffic cop one day. It's a barrel of laughs...

Michael

[Selene]

Technical notes:

1a) the fact that material is published on a site under the control of X does not mean that X could not sue for libel based on that material. In some cases, material which the libelled person himself, but not the libeller, made known to other people, or material contained in a private communication from the libeller to the libellee, were allowed to be sued upon.

Jeff:

My understanding is that since his forum is "public" in it's essential format, the bar for standing would be extremely high. By placing himself in the "public realm" is he not sacrificing most of the protections that would apply to the average citizen?

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

I just deleted a post by Ted Keer. It was exactly the kind of in-your-face childish insults I do not seek for OL (such as telling someone to his face he is a creep, embarrassment, fool, hypocrite, wallows in the gutter yada yada yada like he did in the deleted post).

And I was the one being insulted!

Anyway, this is not Solo Passion and this kind of bullying behavior is not welcome here (although he is not banned).

If anyone is interested, he has entered in contact with me a few times off line demanding that I intervene with this poster or that according to his dictates. And he has done this in the same breath he has written terrible things about me on other forums. Obviously I don't comply and the negative crap he has posted elsewhere is of little value to me.

But I don't run this forum by private message pressure.

Maybe he will be happier where he has more control over folks, since, judging from his behavior, that seems to be a value to him.

Michael

I read it. It was pretty bad.

--Brant

of course I agreed with every word!!!!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jeff,

(sigh)

Do you have a law one can check to support your understanding of libel laws?

The law is what is on the books, not what we think it should be.

In everything I have read about libel, you can sue as libel for an incorrect statement of fact, not for voicing an opinion. It has to be false qua fact and it has to be damaging.

I need to check the laws, but my common sense tells me that when a person has the power of the delete button and chooses to keep a damaging post up from another person, even if it is false fact-wise, the one who allowed it cannot claim damages.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

2) Parve, by itself,does not mean that an item of food is kosher. It means, rather, that the item of kosher food contains neither dairy (cholov, milchig) nor meat (bashar, fleishig), and can therefore be eaten with either.

Then Parve means Kosher + no dairy + no meat? So it’s a subset of Kosher. Close enough for a (hopefully amusing) acronymic neologism.

[Selene]

Jeff,

(sigh)

Do you have a law one can check to support your understanding of libel laws?

The law is what is on the books, not what we think it should be.

In everything I have read about libel, you can sue as libel for an incorrect statement of fact, not for voicing an opinion. It has to be false qua fact and it has to be damaging.

I need to check the laws, but my common sense tells me that when a person has the power of the delete button and chooses to keep a damaging post up from another person, even if it is false fact-wise, the one who allowed it cannot claim damages.

Michael

http://www.dba-oracle.com/internet_journalism_libel_laws.htm

[Alfonso Jones]

I just deleted a post by Ted Keer. It was exactly the kind of in-your-face childish insults I do not seek for OL (such as telling someone to his face he is a creep, embarrassment, fool, hypocrite, wallows in the gutter yada yada yada like he did in the deleted post).

And I was the one being insulted!

Anyway, this is not Solo Passion and this kind of bullying behavior is not welcome here (although he is not banned).

If anyone is interested, he has entered in contact with me a few times off line demanding that I intervene with this poster or that according to his dictates. And he has done this in the same breath he has written terrible things about me on other forums. Obviously I don't comply and the negative crap he has posted elsewhere is of little value to me.

But I don't run this forum by private message pressure.

Maybe he will be happier where he has more control over folks, since, judging from his behavior, that seems to be a value to him.

Michael

I read the post before it was deleted, and think your decision sound, MIchael.

Now, the best moderation is no moderation. But that requires that posters all be committed to be on best behavior (or at least not at their worst!). And we're not there yet.

Bill P

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jeff,

In your link there is a point that throws a huge monkey-wrench in the works: the variety of libel laws depending on the country. Where do you sue and which laws do you use? The closest statement I saw (by Burleson, the article's author, not by a law) that pertains to NZ versus USA libel laws (and NZ is not mentioned) is the following (from here to repeat your link):

In some countries, the burden of proof is on the publisher to prove that their information is true, while in the USA the harmed party must prove that the publishers content was wrong.

So who's the publisher in the case of Robert Campbell posting on Solo Passion? Robert is the Primary Publisher (according to Burleson), but Solo Passion is the Distributor. And the crybaby alleged harmed party is the owner of of the Distributor, being that all Distributors can be:

... held liable if they know or have reason to know of the defamatory nature of the material.

This makes for an interesting case because, in order for the Distributor owner to sue a poster on his own site for libel is if he, as the Distributor, was aware "of the defamatory nature of the material" (as alleged).

But I saw nothing that supports your view that Person A can post on Person B's site, where Person B can choose to leave the content up and also sue for libel.

At least we are now looking in the correct general direction for correct information.

Michael

[jeffrey smith]

Jeff,

(sigh)

Do you have a law one can check to support your understanding of libel laws?

The law is what is on the books, not what we think it should be.

In everything I have read about libel, you can sue as libel for an incorrect statement of fact, not for voicing an opinion. It has to be false qua fact and it has to be damaging.

I need to check the laws, but my common sense tells me that when a person has the power of the delete button and chooses to keep a damaging post up from another person, even if it is false fact-wise, the one who allowed it cannot claim damages.

Michael

Michael, you've been around the block enough times to know that law=!common sense

There have been cases where the libeled person published (in the legal sense, which can mean simply show it to other people) the defamatory material, yet successfuly sued for libel. In other words, had the libeled person kept his peace, absolutely no one else would have known about the libel, yet he still won. So your common sense view might turn out to be wrong from the legal point of view. Depends on the jurisdiction.

Also note that Perigo immediately disputed and threatened to sue, which would tend to neutralize the argument that he left the post up.

And there is the question of whether Perigo really deserves to be termed a public figure, even for a limited purpose.

Just because he thinks he's important...

Also, the question of whether a person is an alcoholic is more a question of fact than opinion.

The central point is simply this: the grounds for a libel suit are not so absurd as they may appear.

And credit to the proper person: the link was actually posted by Adam, not me.

Jeff S.

[Brant Gaede]

And credit to the proper person: the link was actually posted by Adam, not me.

Exploring that link I came across an allusion to the impropriety of posting private emails on the Internet apropos defamation. Just what was done a few years ago by the unmentionables in a galaxy far, far away.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jeff,

Objectivist Liar Lindsay Perigo is a public figure in NZ. He used to be a news broadcaster on a major TV network (his major accomplishment in life seems to be to walk off, claiming the NZ TV news industry is "brain dead"). He is also on TV shows sporadically (few and far between, but it happens). He has also worked in radio. And was one of the founders of NZ's minuscule libertarian party. That's public enough for me.

And, in the bio written of him, there are passages where people claimed he was stinking drunk during one scandal or another and he comes out afterward playing the victim and denies it. So, from the sound of it, this little drama about heavy drinking and claiming he is being slandered has been going on in his life way before he came into the Objectivist orbit. Funny how it's the same thing over and over...

I have not published those passages yet because I didn't want to read the damn thing again. I wrote a review of that book and didn't mention those passages, but I was sorely tempted at the time.

How I missed that the link was by Adam, I don't know. Dayaamm! There's the second mistake of the year...

Just for the record, my common sense in something like this is not normal common sense. I translated about 35,000 pages from Portuguese to English over a 10 year span when I worked as a translator. Much of these documents were legal things like contracts, court documents, certificates of all sorts, laws, etc. Since the laws are based on different premises between Brazil and the USA, I was forced to look up a lot of stuff in order to get the legalese right. This was actually a good lesson in conceptual thinking as opposed to thinking only in words, especially when one set of laws has a concept or provision not found in the other set. The only way to translate that correctly is to use something similar and explain the difference in a translator's footnote.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

It might be worth posting a couple of passages from Coddington's book, if only because it's hard to get hold of.

It isn't available through Amazon, new or used.

It used to be obtainable through SOLOHQ but I doubt Joe Rowlands is in the business of selling that book any longer.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Jeffrey,

The word "publish" is used in an odd way in libel law—all it means is "tell someone else."

Be that as it may, the statement that Lindsay Perigo objected to and threatened to sue over was not a charge that he was an alcoholic.

I've never charged that Mr. Perigo is an alcocholic.

Here's what he actually took offense at:

I haven't said that Mr. Perigo has a drinking problem. I am not saying so now. Personally, I have not been in a position to assess whether he has one or not. My criticisms of him have always focused on his bad character, his verbal abusiveness, and his insatiable appetite for denunciation.

But Mr. Perigo's defensiveness about his drinking is obvious. Some of his recent posts on this site appear to question whether there could be any objective basis for judging anyone to be an alcoholic or to have a drinking problem. He has also opined that Jim Peron has a problem because Mr. Peron doesn't drink.

Barbara Branden has charged him with alcoholism, most recently in her January 2008 letter to Ed Hudgins. But, to my knowledge, Mr. Perigo started threatening to sue her in October 2009.

On top of which, Jabba has tried to create the impression that a mere association with Barbara Branden is enough to make me a defendant in his libel suit. And he has repeatedly falsely asserted, right on the pages of SOLO, that I'd called him an alcoholic when I hadn't.

Finally, Jabba is a definitely a public figure, as that term is understood in American law.

Robert Campbell

PS. I've been sued for libel, by a professor who lied on his résumé. I was one of five who had said, at one time or another, that he'd lied. The only one who was still a defendant when the case went to trial had publicly stated that he had committed "felony fraud." He didn't win. And, although the guy who sued me is less well-known than Lindsay Perigo, he was deemed a public figure. Our senior defense lawyer correctly predicted that only the colleague who had accused him of a crime would still be a defendant when the case went to trial.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

Here's one at the start of the book: Perigo! Politically Incorrect by Deborah Coddington. Ms. Coddington quotes others during the book, but often she gives no source for the quotes. I presume they are taken from interviews or conversations she had with the people quoted.

In 1993 (sixteen years ago) Perigo resigned from Television New Zealand, most specifically from the TVNZ News and Current Affairs program where he was an interviewer. He also issued a press release about it.

In Coddington's discussion of the "he said this," and "she said that," of what actually went on, Perigo claimed that Aline Sandilands (the head of Public Relations of TVNZ) phoned him to try to convince him to change his mind. Sandilands denied this and claimed he called her while intoxicated. The quote below refers to her. It is found on p. 16.

She denies any attempt was made to change Perigo's mind. "He phoned me very late that night [after the press release had been given to Barry Shaw], it might have been about 1am. He was in an inebriated state and he ranted and raved about TVNZ. I tried to be conciliatory, but he abused me personally saying things like 'you're just one of them' and in the end I put the phone down. I was not in the mood to discuss it." Aline Sandilands says she does not recall phoning Perigo to discuss whether he would reconsider.

As is typical of how Perigo has handled the later online discussions of his alcohol consumption, here is his response (p. 17):

As to phoning her drunk on the night if his resignation, Perigo says that simply did not happen. "I was getting up at 4am to do my radio programme [breakfast on World Service New Zealand] the next day and if I was drunk at one in the morning then there's no way I would have made it into the radio.

"I'll happily confess to phoning Paul Norris late one night when I'd had too much to drink. I was having dinner at Valerio's [restaurant which was in Parnell] and Valerio was winding me up all night -- 'They treat you like sheeeet Lindsay, why do you put up with eeeet? Tell them to get stuffed' -- or words to that effect and I got so angry I walked home up the hill, rang Norris and let him have it. I believe at his farewell speech Norris said that at least he wouldn't have to put up with Perigo's late night phone calls. He could have put the phone down then. He actually told me later that he didn't realise I was drunk because I was so articulate."

In other words, Jabba confessed that he did get drunk in public and that he was used to calling others late at night to rant at them.

And Mr. Superdrunk is so super that no one ever notices, except those who are lying, of course.

Heh.

Michael