I had hoped to
conclude my internet sparring with law Prof. Nancy Leong. However her recent, and most inventive, piece of smear-artistry requires some comments and corrections.
The primary flaw in
Leong’s five-post series at Feminist Law Professors, especially her concluding post, is her deliberate failure to consistently distinguish between harassment and criticism, which allows her to describe critics of her work as harassers, of whom I am deemed
“the most persistent.”
Google's online dictionary provides workable thumbnail definitions of the terms "harassment" and "criticism." Harassment is defined as "aggressive pressure or intimidation." Criticism is defined as "the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes" and as "the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work."
Google's online dictionary provides workable thumbnail definitions of the terms "harassment" and "criticism." Harassment is defined as "aggressive pressure or intimidation." Criticism is defined as "the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes" and as "the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work."
I assert that legitimate criticism includes expressing the view that a particular law review article is meritless or absurd. And few are as meritless and absurd as Nancy Leong's remarkable law review article entitled The Open Road and the Traffic Stop: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of the American Dream," 64 Fla L.Rev. 305 (2012) (complaining that Fourth Amendment caselaw is "dry," "mundane," and "focused on minutiae" in contrast to the "poetry or magic" of her fave movies and songs, those that feature the open road as a narrative motif). Likewise, it is criticism, rather than harassment, to note the irony that the author of this nonsense is a stalwart proponent of the view that legal scholarship holds immense value for law students and the profession, and to note the further irony that the author has zero practice experience in the field she is paid so well to profess: criminal law.
The category of harassment, by contrast, includes Professor Leong's behavior in snooping the identity of a pseudonymous critic and then sending that critic a stalker email containing false accusations of racism and sexism, and a demand for a discussion via a medium (telephone) specified by her and by a deadline imposed by her, under the threat of outing. Nancy Leong is my harasser, not the other way around. In the classic fashion of smear artists, such as Brian Leiter, she projects her behavior on to others. I appreciate that Leong does not know much about criminal law, which she has never practiced. Therefore, she may find it instructive to look up the statutory definition of intimidation in my jurisdiction.
In her efforts to portray me as obsessed, Leong asserts that I have posted approximately 70 comments about her under the pseudonym "dybbuk" and that it "would not surprise" her to learn that some offensive anonymous comments about her were also authored by me. Contrary to this claim, if you tally up my posts and comments referencing Leong, the number is around 25. Furthermore, I have not commented on Leong under any other screen name, or as an anonymous poster--and will say so in an affidavit, if it comes to that.
I believe that all of my posts and comments regarding Leong, with the exception of a single wisecrack, pertain either to her article Open Road, or to her utter lack of practice experience in the field of criminal law. I am especially proud of this short satiric piece about Open Road, which Leong describes as a "lengthy play[ ] about me." It is telling that, throughout Leong's truly lengthy series of blog posts about her alleged harassment at the cyber-hands of me and other scambloggers, she does not once acknowledge the existence of Open Road, let alone that is is the target of much of the scamblogger criticism, especially my own. Perhaps, she is ashamed of the article. If so, that is to her credit -- she should be ashamed of it.
The only example Leong offers to substantiate her contention that I made numerous racist posts is particularly ludicrous. In a comment on a JD Underground (JDU) thread last year, I referred to a law professor conference in Hawaii, where Leong was one of the speakers, as "a gravy train, or shall I say, a luau train." "Gravy train" was a reference to the free vacations masquerading as scholarly conferences that law professors routinely hold for themselves, vacations ultimately paid for by their massively indebted students. "Luau train" was my reference to the fact that this particular law professor conference was held at a Waikiki beach resort, where they stage starlight luaus for the pampered resort guests.
In her efforts to portray me as obsessed, Leong asserts that I have posted approximately 70 comments about her under the pseudonym "dybbuk" and that it "would not surprise" her to learn that some offensive anonymous comments about her were also authored by me. Contrary to this claim, if you tally up my posts and comments referencing Leong, the number is around 25. Furthermore, I have not commented on Leong under any other screen name, or as an anonymous poster--and will say so in an affidavit, if it comes to that.
I believe that all of my posts and comments regarding Leong, with the exception of a single wisecrack, pertain either to her article Open Road, or to her utter lack of practice experience in the field of criminal law. I am especially proud of this short satiric piece about Open Road, which Leong describes as a "lengthy play[ ] about me." It is telling that, throughout Leong's truly lengthy series of blog posts about her alleged harassment at the cyber-hands of me and other scambloggers, she does not once acknowledge the existence of Open Road, let alone that is is the target of much of the scamblogger criticism, especially my own. Perhaps, she is ashamed of the article. If so, that is to her credit -- she should be ashamed of it.
The only example Leong offers to substantiate her contention that I made numerous racist posts is particularly ludicrous. In a comment on a JD Underground (JDU) thread last year, I referred to a law professor conference in Hawaii, where Leong was one of the speakers, as "a gravy train, or shall I say, a luau train." "Gravy train" was a reference to the free vacations masquerading as scholarly conferences that law professors routinely hold for themselves, vacations ultimately paid for by their massively indebted students. "Luau train" was my reference to the fact that this particular law professor conference was held at a Waikiki beach resort, where they stage starlight luaus for the pampered resort guests.
Leong described my joke about a "luau train" as an effort to disparage her Native Hawaiian ancestry, something I had no idea she possessed. Personally, I doubt that Leong herself believes that that comment was racist. It is yet another irony that a lawprof, who blogs in an authoritative tone about the proper way to converse about race, grants herself permission to defend her wounded pride with false accusations of racism.
