Carl Salonen Threatens Libel Action

Okay, an update to this morning's post: "Outing Tintin at Sadly No!"

As mentioned, I'm still researching information, although now it looks as though Carl Salonen's going to make the job a lot easier. Salonen, who Amy Alkon has identified as the Sadly No! ringleader in the attacks on her book, now indicates that he's "brought" suit against me, in the comments at Racist Repac3 = Casper:

"It's brought" is reference to the verb phrase as "bringing a lawsuit," and as of 10:00pm EDT the announcement flew right over the heads of dimbulbs James Casper and Brendan Keefe at the thread. Idiots.

Carl Salonen's an idiot too. Not only will I file a motion to dismiss for lack of venue, I'll file counter claim for abuse of process, and I'll reverse the libel charges. While keeping Tintin in the loop, Carl Solenen has libeled me on Twitter "child pornographer":

Carl Salonen isn't the first to call me a paunchy middle-aged child pornographer. Scott Eric Kaufman made the allegations previously. And "too little, too late" is a reference to my entry this morning, and my pulled posts.

Not only that, see Glenn Reynolds, "Libel in the Blogosphere":

Blog-culture also frowns on libel suits, and threats of libel suits. Anyone threatening a blogger with legal action—even if that person is a blogger as well—can expect a generally hostile response from many, many other bloggers. This is what happened, for example, when economist-blogger Donald Luskin threatened then-anonymous blogger “Atrios” (since self-unmasked as Duncan Black). Many bloggers, including myself, urged Luskin to withdraw his threat, as he finally did.

When a non-blogger threatens such a suit, the result is usually even more fierce, resulting in far more bad publicity than the original statement is likely to have produced (publicity that, because of blogs’ strong representation in the Google ranking scheme, will be prominently displayed to anyone researching the threatener). In addition, bloggers and blog readers tend to do their best to discover any other embarrassing matter regarding the threatener, adding an “Army of Davids” effect to the old lawyers’ saying that if you sue someone for libel, they’re “liable to prove it.”

Finally, speedy correction of factual errors is another cultural value of the blogosphere. When errors of fact are pointed out, most bloggers correct them immediately (something that is easy with blogging software as it is not for newspapers, television broadcasters, or book publishers) and generally do so with the same degree of prominence as the original error. This practice makes libel suits less likely, of course, and would arguably serve as evidence of absence of malice.

I'll have more later.

I took my posts down while gathering more evidence, and that goes to show "absence of malice."

But whatever. I'm especially looking forward to how "bloggers and blog readers tend to do their best to discover any other embarrassing matter regarding the threatener, adding an “Army of Davids” effect to the old lawyers’ saying that if you sue someone for libel, they’re “liable to prove it.”

I mentioned this last night, when I suggested that Carl Salonen doesn't really want the publicity. Sadly No! is reviled across the conservasphere. But if Carl's cruisin' for a bruisin', hey, bring it on brother.