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A rich man's game
Oct. 8th, 2009 08:40 amI've been unsettled at this whole David Letterman story. On the simple side of the ledger, Letterman is a crap boss who plays sexual politics at work and is now getting a bump in the ratings (and increased advertising revenue, presumably) because rubberneckers want to stare and point at him apologizing and joking about it. I don't know what it will take to make America stop caring about his ego, but I wish we'd hurry up and find it.
The unsettled part is that the guy who blew the whistle is looking at fifteen years in prison because he attempted to negotiate an out-of-court settlement for potential civil damages that had been done against him. Admittedly, that's a very charitable assessment, but he could have planned to sue for the civil damages because his girlfriend was directly affected by Letterman's adultery and workplace sexual harassment, and it makes sense that it surely would have been worth more to Letterman to settle those charges before a public lawsuit was announced. Except I got around to looking it up this morning, and that's actually the definition of extortion.
It is against the law to threaten to sue someone if they don't take some mitigating action (evidently not just money and property, but also providing services).
Did you know that? I sure as hell didn't. All those times that some Usenet troll would harangue about how their lawyer was drafting motions yadda yadda yadda, it was waving a smoking gun around the place. It's a shame none of us were David Letterman, or we could have called our local District Attorney and had taxpayer money spent to fight our battles. This is a golden illustration of why a strongly progressive tax system is rational; rich people get more public services than the rest of us and therefore they should pay a premium for the premium treatment.
The unsettled part is that the guy who blew the whistle is looking at fifteen years in prison because he attempted to negotiate an out-of-court settlement for potential civil damages that had been done against him. Admittedly, that's a very charitable assessment, but he could have planned to sue for the civil damages because his girlfriend was directly affected by Letterman's adultery and workplace sexual harassment, and it makes sense that it surely would have been worth more to Letterman to settle those charges before a public lawsuit was announced. Except I got around to looking it up this morning, and that's actually the definition of extortion.
It is against the law to threaten to sue someone if they don't take some mitigating action (evidently not just money and property, but also providing services).
Did you know that? I sure as hell didn't. All those times that some Usenet troll would harangue about how their lawyer was drafting motions yadda yadda yadda, it was waving a smoking gun around the place. It's a shame none of us were David Letterman, or we could have called our local District Attorney and had taxpayer money spent to fight our battles. This is a golden illustration of why a strongly progressive tax system is rational; rich people get more public services than the rest of us and therefore they should pay a premium for the premium treatment.
