By Rachel on August 23, 2005 4:04 PM
If Bloomberg be the food of love, spray on! Chalk one up for the miscreants of New York City: yesterday Judge Ted S. Rakoff found in favor of Marck Ecko and his street party, which will feature grafitti artists decorating mock subway trains. Crack legal correspondent Bucky Turco, conscripted for the edification of all Fishbowl readers, reported that one of the issues at hand was the 
difference between First Amendment protections offered to commercial speech versus personal expression, since the street party is meant to promote an Atari video game — but apparently the game won’t even be making an appearance at the event. Which means the event is covered by the full panoply of First Amendment protections, whooo hoo! Bucky said the hearing was interesting and the judge was a hoot, saying that Bloomberg’s claim that the graffiti was “tantamount to ‘encouraging vandalism’” would then logically imply that “a street performance of Hamlet would be tantamount to encouraging revenge murder. Or, in a different vein, a street performance of ‘rap’ music might well include the singing of lyrics that could be viewed as encouraging sexual assault… As for a street performance of Oedipus Rex don’t even think about it.” According to Bucky, the crowd roared. Said converted legal scholar Bucky Turco: “This judge made the law and the case and the process pretty interesting.” More important, it’s no longer a sin to dance! But it’s also a nice victory for art and expression in New York City. To paraphrase Voltaire: “I do not believe in what you spray, but I will defend to the death your right to spray it.” [AdRants]
Arianna and the NYT: Show. No. Mercy. Arianna Huffington lights into the NYT for backsliding into Chalabi-quoting with nary a whisper of his colorful and storied sourcing past. She’s pretty merciless, actually, and it’s a pretty killer post. She also tosses an eensy poisoned dart at Judith Miller, clearly not involved in this one: “At least we know it wasn’t Judy Miller’s fault. The one good thing about prison is that it gives you a great alibi.” Ouch. But the upshot is that the Times used a totally impugned and discredited source again, on a matter where as Arianna points out there were other sources to be had. She very rightly calls attention to that. Calame, Keller, I hope your cheeks are stinging.
[HuffPo]
Tapping the phone of the Patak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak: He wants to know who now Governor George Pataki wants an investigation into who taped phone calls from his office and sent the tapes to the New York Post. Woodward and Bernstein are on it. [NYT]
E&P Ed wants us out of Iraq-aq-aq-aq-aq-aq-aq-aq, and he tells newsies how: E&P editor in chief Greg Mitchell thinks newspapers ought to start using their editorial pages to encourage withdrawal from Iraq. Gee, wouldn’t it be good if we had one central governing press body telling us all what to write in our editorals? That would save everyone so much work! [E&P]
Just six hundred bucks to learn from Novak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak, what a great deal, wow!: The Village Voice’s Syd Schanberg reports that the latest “confidential” seminar with Robert Novak is filling up. Attendees, if you want to get your money’s worth don’t ask him about Katherine Harris. [VV]
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