The formerly anonymous blogger who devoted an entire website to smearing the easily enraged model Liskula Cohen has given her first interview, one that could only be described as quite ballsy. Among her claims:
that Cohen actually “defamed herself” by going to the press;
that her right to privacy was violated after Cohen made a whole big thing about a website that had only “probably two hits” at the time;
that she plans to sue Google for $15 million for failing to protect her identity, even though Google fought to keep her anonymous and disclosed her e-mail address to Cohen only after a court ordered the company to do so;
that, furthermore, she specifically expected “that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users.” Ha!
But surely the ballsiest statement of all came from Port’s lawyer, Salvatore Strazzullo.
His client, you see, is simply the latest in a long line of celebrated American patriots.
“I’m ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court,” Strazzullo said. “Our Founding Fathers wrote, ‘The Federalist Papers’ under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn’t that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?”
Maybe! Of course, the major difference is that freedom of speech doesn’t necessarily permit defamation. When James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers under the pseudonym “Publius,” they were explaining the merits of the Constitution to a suspicious populace, not slandering Brutus as a “ho” and the winner of a made-up “Skankiest in NYC” competition.
Outed blogger Rosemary Port blames model Liskula Cohen for ‘skank’ stink [NYDN]
