Shoot, It Looks Like My Parents Have an ICP Infestation

In Which I Laugh Out Loud

These folks are going to tell me about civility?! People, there are a lot of folks in this state whose whole goal is to position themselves as the people who make trouble in private and spend their time in public squawking about civility.

And, Woods is right, looking at who’s on that panel?

It’s rich. It is certainly rich.

Well, I Hope We’re Not Pinning Our Hopes on the Examiner to Save Media

So, poor Julia Hurley out east is being slut-shamed like it’s going out of style because… well, you know, basically because she’s a woman running for office and the easiest way to get rid of a woman running for office is to insinuate that she’s a slut. As we all remember from high school, being a “slut” is just being in some way on people’s radar as needing to be taken down a peg. You can be a slut without sleeping around. You can be a slut and be a virgin. Almost any behavior a woman has to, by virtue of living in this world, participate in can be turned around on her so that she’s a slut.

Hurley is a slut because she worked at Hooters and was a model. Yes, having a job or two can make you a slut.

Whatever. Some day the women on the Hill are going to get sick of this double standard–that the men can act like coming to Nashville is winning the “Act Like You’ve Never Even Heard of Morals” sweepstakes with very few repercussions while a woman can’t even fulfill the duties of her job without her morals being called into question. And when they start talking openly about who’s doing what, that shit will get home to wives and voters as fast as you can press send on an email.

Just by technological necessity, we’re living in the last days of “As long as I do it in Nashville, I can keep it a secret from everyone back home.”

But that’s not my point. David Oatney writes for The Examiner, which is supposed to be some kind of news outlet. He has the photos. And The Examiner won’t let him publish them.

In the comments of his post, “Examiner” says:

This is copyright infringement regardless of whether the owner complains or not. A crime is a crime even if you don’t get caught. (Also, it is against Examiner policies to use copyrighted pictured without permission.)

Wow. Have you ever read something so stupid in your life? This is supposed to be a news outlet. One of their writers has copies of the images at the center of a huge, albeit incredibly stupid, story. And they think posting them would be copyright infringment?

And these are the folks who are supposed to be coming up with a sustainable model for media?

This is exactly the type of circumstance the fair use exception was created for. This is a news story. The Examiner is purporting to be a media outlet of some type. And a writer they pay to write new-like items has photographs at the center of a state-wide story, photographs that the public has now been told are prurient and politically damaging. The public does have a fair-use right to see those photos (whether they have any business looking at those photos is another matter).

Is there not someone at The Examiner who can make a fair-use determination when one of their writers is sitting on the material at the heart of a state-wide story? Or are they so busy being the processed chicken nugget of media that they have no flexibility in their rules?

Sincerely, could there be any stupider a policy?

Don’t get me wrong. I’d have a hard time being convinced to cross the street to pee on Oatney if he were on fire. So, part of me is having a good laugh here. But he’s being wronged by The Examiner.