Can the truth be libelous?

A tempest has erupted in one of my favorite teapots.

Here’s the deal: One company is stiffed by another, and a principal at the stiffee proposes to “let the word out” that the stiffer is experiencing financial difficulties.

And all the people cry: No! They’re courting a libel suit!

Possibly, says Strong Language. But how about “letting the word out” that this customer didn’t pay a vendor? There’s one absolute defense against libel: Truth. If it’s true, it’s never libelous, by definition. That’s been upheld in courts forever.

Then comes Joe Riden, who responds:

Sorry, SL, this is absolutely the wrong idea. Attacking someone’s reputation is not allowed. Truth is NOT protection against charges of libel. Libel is making a written attempt to harm or destroy someone’s reputation . . . the more truthful your statements, the greater your liability.

Well, Mr. Riden would be correct — if we lived in the UK. But in American law, libel has 3 elements: falseness, negligence, and harm. FindLaw offers a concise summary of libel.

No true statement is ever libelous, and that fact has been upheld repeatedly by US courts.

A true statement can violate other laws. When a hospital said I was out cold and on my back within its walls, that may have violated HIIPA. When somone said Valerie Wilson was a spy, that may have violated the National Secrets Act. But neither statement could ever be libelous, precisely because both were true.

To sum up

Truth is not illegal, nor is it capable of libel.

Splenda is or Splenda ain’t?

Splenda blindsided the faux sugar industry and left it hopping mad.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Sugar! There’s nothing sweeter than pure white cane.
2. Of the artificials, Splenda tastes closest to cane.
3. In a deft marketing gambit, Splenda has staked two claims at once: It’s sugar, and it’s not sugar.

It’s sugar in almost every way. It’s derived from sugar, behaves much like sugar, has a chemical compound formula almost identical to sugar. (Remember dextrose, fructose, sucrose, glucose, etc.? All that ose.)

It’s not sugar. Period. No calories, no effect on blood sugar.

BOOM! No wonder consumers went wild. They were lapping it up, eating it raw by the bucket. Some were using funnels. Never underestimate the sweet tooth.

The makers of Blue and Pink, naturally, felt otherwise. (Splenda is the yellow one). Not fair! they cried. Splenda can’t have it both ways!

They have made appropriate complaints.

Meanwhile, Splenda marches on, and the people want more, and we may see over-the-counter intravenous delivery systems by early 09.

 

 

The language of home buying

We’re noticing some interesting usages in this market. Here’s a sampling.

Selling agent. (n) The real estate agent representing the buyer.

Don’t believe it? Read a contract.

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Affordable. (adj) A measure of home price.

The developers promised council that thirty percent of the homes in their proposed project will be affordable.

Does that mean 70 percent will be unaffordable? Of course not — because affordable has a slightly different meaning in the real estate business. Basically it means lower-priced than some on the block. (If you want more meat: An affordable home in a given subdivision is one that’s reasonably available to a buyer whose income is less than average incomes in the subdivision, usually by a proportion fixed by law, contract or industry convention.)

---

Fool. (n) The seller, according to everyone who stands to be paid out of the deal.

The man is mad not to accept your offer. It is the opinion of agents, lenders, Bob Bernanke — everyone.

We buyers are hopeful, but we are not so certain. In a down market the fool has already gotten us to bid up faster than he comes down. Shouldn’t things be going in the other direction?

Even if we walk, and the seller receives no more offers like ours, and ends up selling for less — does that qualify him as a full-fledged fool? Like the tulip fools of Holland?

A small voice murmurs. If the seller is a fool for rejecting your offer, it must be sweet indeed. Thus are you not fools in equal or greater proportion for offering such a deal?

Long ago the small voice studied logic, and sums.

Yet on we trudge.

________________________________________________

Between the lines. It’s also important to appreciate what’s not being said. Consider the listings, for example. Picture windows and sunroom, said one seller. Left unmentioned was the striking view, a six-story power line pylon. Wouldn’t you think the seller would want to capitalize on that? Like having the Eiffel Tower in your back yard!

More TK, as we approach Carving Closing Day.

Joybubbles has gone

Joybubbles died on August 8, a legendary figure. He was one of the first “phone freaks,” a blind man who learned to whistle telephone tones and thus place a call anywhere in the world for free.

Joybubbles was a hacker. He came into the world as Joe Engressia, when the phone system was “the world’s biggest, most complex, most interesting computer,” notes Douglas Martin in the Times.

Joybubbles (he changed his name in 1991) was pretty interesting, too.

More on Joybubbles:
NYTimes Obit
DontCallMeTina

31 treats for youse

LANGUAGE WARNING: STRONG DOSE AHEAD
When SL cleans out the files — take cover.
____________________________________________

“Daddy, are you lost?” I asked tenderly. “Shut up,” he explained.
. . . . . . . .Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrants, 1920

Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
. . . . . . . .Flannery O’Connor

Most editors are failed writers. But so are most writers.
. . . . . . . .William Faulkner

Give me the coroner and I’ll rule the county.
. . . . . . . .Al Capone, on the relative importance of officeholders

It gives me a headache merely to know of it.
. . . . . . . .William James, on the new Metaphysical Club of Boston

What is the question to which Segway is the answer?
. . . . . . . .Herman Leonard, Harvard University

Kids used to cry when I pitched. You play off that fear. You let one go every now and then, throw it to the backstop.
. . . . . . . .Matt Mantei, Arizona Diamondbacks

I always thought the Yankees had a good deal to do with it.
. . . . . . . .CSA General George Pickett, when asked why the South
. . . . . . . .lost at Gettysburg

What have you got?
. . . . . . . .Johnny (Marlon Brando), The Wild One, 1954
. . . . . . . .Replying to the question “What are you rebelling against?”

Uneventful.
. . . . . . . .Captain John Smith of the Titanic at a pre-launch press
. . . . . . . .conference, describing his career so far

Funding eduction through ignorance
. . . . . . . Rejected slogan for The Georgia Lottery

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.
. . . . . . . .Leonardo da Vinci

The tiger didn’t go crazy. The tiger went tiger.
. . . . . . . .Chris Rock, on the 2003 tiger win in Las Vegas

The pig carries the picture, not you. If it flops, it’s his fault.
. . . . . . . .Advice received by actor James Cromwell about the advantages
. . . . . . . .of the farmer role in Babe *. .

Let’s you and him fight!
. . . . . . . .Origin unknown; ascribed to Mark Twain. Tom Wolfe used it to
. . . . . . . .good effect in A Man in Full.

I knew her before she was a virgin.
. . . . . . . .Oscar Levant, about Doris Day

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, and philosophers, and divines.
. . . . . . . .Ralph Waldo Emerson

Change was for weaklings.
. . . . . . . .Evan Connell, Mrs. Bridge

____________________________________________

I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.
. . . . . . . .Abraham Lincoln, August 1861, overturning a military
. . . . . . . .emancipation

Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.
. . . . . . . .Ralph Waldo Emerson, April 1862

Lincoln was the greatest American writer. He used language to drive
action — and he knew that cannon trumped canon. Good thing, huh? SL

____________________________________________

There were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate five.
. . . . . . . Judge Melville Gerry sentencing Alferd Packer to hang,
. . . . . . . Colorado, 1873 **
. . . . . . . .
I’d enjoy to.
. . . . . . . .A mobster, Ball of Fire

Ocian! Ocian in view!
. . . . . . . .William Clark, 1805, near the mouth of the Columbia

We’re just jamming. That’s all. You can leave if you want to.
. . . . . . . .Jimi Hendrix, 1969, Woodstock

Truth is the most valuable thing we have — let us economize it.
. . . . . . . .Mark Twain, Pudd’n’head Wilson’s New Calendar

Harness yon braying jackass!
. . . . . . . .A traveling Shakespearean, ad lib, after his line“My kingdom for
. . . . . . . .a horse!” drew a laugh in Cordele, Georgia

The unshakeable resolution of a coward who will stop at nothing.
. . . . . . . .Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

One cannot study Reconstruction without first frankly facing the facts of universal lying.
. . . . . . . .W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America

The soul is healed by being with children.
. . . . . . . .Fyodor Dostoevsky

I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.
. . . . . . . .Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
. . . . . . . .Oscar Wilde

One of the big secrets of finding time is not to watch television.
. . . . . . . .Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo

Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
. . . . . . . .Mark Twain

They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
Who steal the common from the goose.
. . . . . . . .Comment on the British Enclosure Laws, 1764
. . . . . . . .Author unknown

____________________________________________

* An actor with range: Cromwell also played LAPD
Captain Dudley Smith in LA Confidential.

** And a tip o’ the hat to my hosts at Boulder’s finest
table — the Alferd Packer Grill at the CU student center.

Powerhouse!

Your time upon this earth is short. Read Eudora Welty.
____________________________________________

Powerhouse is playing!

He’s here on tour from the city — “Powerhouse and His Keyboard” — “Powerhouse and His Tasmanians”— think of the things he calls himself!

There’s no one in the world like him. You can’t tell what he is. “Negro man”? — he looks more Asiatic, monkey, Jewish, Babylonian, Peruvian, fanatic, devil. He has pale gray eyes, heavy lids, maybe horny like a lizard’s, but big glowing eyes when they’re open. He has African feet of the greatest size, stomping, both together, on each side of the pedals. He’s not coal black — beverage colored—looks like a preacher when his mouth is going every minute: like a monkey’s when it looks for something. Improvising, coming on a light and childish melody — smooch — he loves it with his mouth.

This is a white dance. Powerhouse is not a show-off like the Harlem boys, not drunk, not crazy — he’s in a trance; he’s a person of joy, a fanatic.

He listens as much as he performs, a look of hideous, powerful rapture on his face. When he plays he beats down piano and seat and wears them away. He is in motion every moment — what could be more obscene?

There he is with his great head, fat stomach, and little round piston legs, and long yellow-sectioned strong big fingers, at rest about the size of bananas. Of course you know how he sounds — you’ve heard him on records — but still you need to see him. He’s going all the time, like skating around the skating rink or rowing a boat. It makes everybody crowd around, here in this shadowless steel-trussed hall with the rose-like posters of Nelson Eddy and the testimonial for the mind-reading horse in handwriting magnified five hundred times.

Then all quietly he lays his finger on a key with the promise and serenity of a sibyl touching the book.

 

The Atlantic Monthly, June 1941