Why Kerry should sue the Sun

[T_i_B]

Sidney Blumenthal holds forth. Mind you, lots of more reputable Anti-GOP stories have appeared like this in the UK left wing press as well so it works both ways if you ask me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1151093,00.html

On February 13, on the eve of Valentine's Day, Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper screeched, "New JFK rocked by sex scandal", naming the woman as Alexandra Polier and quoting her father as calling Kerry "a sleazeball". On February 15, the Tory papers, the Mail and the Telegraph, quoted her "friend": "This is not going to go away. What actually happened is much nastier than what is being reported." Murdoch's Sunday Times repeated the "sleazeball" quote and winked knowingly: "It is a tale of two Americas, as the Democrats might say."

Back in the US, frustrated rightwing media tried to force the issue, using the authority of the British imprimatur. Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host, broadcasting on more than 600 radio stations, boomed: "It's all over the UK press! It's front page!" He suggested that President Clinton was the source of the story in order to bump off Kerry and help Senator Hillary Clinton become president. The neoconservative former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote in National Review: "Isn't it curious how after a story like this breaks there turn out to be dozens of people who were in on the secret?" On CNN, the Sunday Times columnist and Drudge pal Andrew Sullivan held forth: "Can you anymore not talk about something that's on the front page of the Times of London, front page of the Drudge Report, on everybody's minds? There comes a point at which the media has to acknowledge people are talking."

On February 16, Polier spoke for herself, declaring the story "completely false" and explaining her motive in stepping forward. "Because these stories were false, I assumed the media would ignore them. It seems that efforts to peddle these lies continue, so I feel compelled to address them." It turned out she was not even an intern. Her father said that the notorious "sleazeball" quote attributed to him had been fabricated. Drudge, ever gallant, blamed the story on the young woman's imagined seductive behaviour: "Polier's flippant remarks and flirtatious manner, according to friends, fuelled the intrigue."

In the US, there is virtually no legal protection for a public figure, especially a political one, from defamation. Libel laws are de facto defunct. Public opinion is inevitably swayed by this tainting, all journalism has fallen under suspicion and truth cannot easily be distinguished from malicious fiction. Only if Kerry (or Polier) were to sue the Sun under British libel law, for example, would this transatlantic corruption of the press be truly engaged. Then a British court would begin to set important rules in American politics.