“You never really know a man till you walk a mile in his shoes” ~ Atticus Finch
Before Hurricane Katrina, when I was still a relative newbie on the finance message boards, I was cyber smeared as I managed to piss off some very powerful people. Part of that smear, most of it in fact, derived from using typical stereotypes of Mississippians, as I was accused of everything from racism to homophobia and every intolerant stereotype in between, none of which are true. They were effective however as it played to what I’ll call a mass cognitive bias. Mississippians have a long history of shameful, intolerant behavior and to this day we all have a general reputation as racists. Out of the ass kicking I took back then, I filed what happened away as is my wont, determined to revisit the issue again when the time was right. That time comes today.
For those of you that have missed out on the jolly good time we’ve had over the past couple of weeks with the libel tourists Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret I became the most notorious blogger in all of the Maritimes and then Canada itself when the Toronto Star cyber smeared me over the default libel judgment Leary and Perret obtained against me in Nova Scotia. I was anticipating it back in mid January and posted several hints to the Slabbed Nation about what was coming. You see folks that first cut back then before Katrina was indeed the deepest. This time though, I had the advantage of having the playbook in advance.
So I called the Nova Scotia judiciary a “judicial hellhole” among other things while the case against me there was being adjudicated. I knew that Leary and Perret would make sure the judge knew in order to stoke the flames. I wanted a large judgment and am actually disappointed it wasn’t 7 figures like was rumored a few days before. That said I must have also really worked up that twit Suzanne Hood, as she took two days to prepare the damages opinion and then spent 75 minutes reading it aloud according to press reports. I do not have much respect for court systems that cater to con men and grifters and was happy to show it because I knew it would help highlight a larger problem with Libel Tourism. The way I had it figured the larger the award, the more notoriety it would get in the Canadian media. To the extent there is no such thing as bad publicity I welcomed it as I knew that “context coupled with facts” would win the day once the propaganda induced anger subsided. Continue reading “Confessions of a straight southern white guy: “Why context coupled with facts matter””
