{"id":2458,"date":"2004-07-19T18:55:35","date_gmt":"2004-07-19T22:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/07\/19\/sin-city-schcadenfreude\/"},"modified":"2004-07-19T18:55:35","modified_gmt":"2004-07-19T22:55:35","slug":"sin-city-schcadenfreude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/07\/19\/sin-city-schcadenfreude\/","title":{"rendered":"Sin City Schcadenfreude"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

It is not often that the Dowbrigade
\n feels obliged to defend a
\n previous posting<\/a>. However, our posting of
\n yesterday concerning Cameron Diaz’s ongoing legal battle to keep
\n a revealing video off the internet market raised well-intentioned
\n concern on the part of some readers.<\/font><\/p>\n

Their arguments were twofold. First,
\n the posting was in poor taste, featuring as it did gratuitous sex
\n and celebrity, and second, that even granting that poor taste may
\n be an indelible stain on our everlasting soul, maybe at least we
\n could tone it down during the build up to Convention Week, when surely
\n many
\n new readers would be visiting the site as the fleeting and fickle
\n searchlight of public attention swept briefly over our corner of
\n the blogosphere.<\/font><\/p>\n

Let us take these arguments
\n one at a time. First, quite aside from our second amendment rights
\n to free sp each and freedom of the press, we find four convincing
\n reasons this story was post-worthy.<\/font><\/p>\n

First, it is a real legal case,
\n not just some celebrity rumor or supermarket tabloid slander. An
\n injunction has been issued. All sorts of legal terms like "cease and
\n desist" and
\n "substantial
\n compensatory damage and punitive damages" appear in the narrative,
\n making it a legitimate story for the legal nature of my current teaching
\n assignment.<\/font><\/p>\n

Second, the central nature of
\n the legal question is a topic near and dear to the Dowbrigade’s heart,
\n and in fact, potentially significant in our ability to continue doing
\n what we are doing right now – linking to primary news sources so
\n readers have the freedom to follow trails and investigate on their
\n own.<\/font><\/p>\n

Third, we have always had a
\n fascination for the foibles of the rich and famous, which this story
\n tickles with a strange mixture of schadenfreude, that German word
\n that means taking delight in the misfortune of
\n others, American’s worship of celebrity, and a stubborn streak of
\n Puritan penance, the feeling that bad things will happen to people
\n who have too good a time.<\/font><\/p>\n

Finally, it gave us a chance
\n to spice up this often boring political stuff with some attractively
\n displayed and photographed female breasts. Frankly, if you
\n are deeply offended by the sight of an uncovered female breast, you
\n are reading the wrong blog.<\/font><\/p>\n

Not that the Dowbrigade News is pornographic
\n – far from it. All of the naked flesh revealed on these pages
\n will be chocked full of redeeming social value, social, political
\n and educational as well as acetic.<\/font><\/p>\n

Which brings us to the second
\n point.  We are aware that we will be getting a lot of new readers
\n in the weeks ahead. Why should be change our style for them? Almost
\n all of them will move on after the convention is over.  Besides,
\n it is our inimicable style which got us this far, it would be deceptive
\n and self-defeating to change in an attempt to attract more readers. It
\n was never about the readers anyway.<\/font><\/p>\n

The Dowbrigade News has always
\n been a combination of political commentary and humor, often in the
\n same postings. We doubt many people come back for the commentary.
\n When we first started the blog we were asked what we wanted to get
\n out of it, and without thinking, we answered, "If we can get our
\n readers to think a little and laugh a little each day, that’s enough." <\/font><\/p>\n

We will never out-pundit the
\n pundits. But when someone laughs, a surprising amount of the
\n time, thinking follows.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is not often that the Dowbrigade feels obliged to defend a previous posting. However, our posting of yesterday concerning Cameron Diaz’s ongoing legal battle to keep a revealing video off the internet market raised well-intentioned concern on the part of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}