Egyptologists should be made of sterner tough. This book, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World, is no obscure academic tome, but rather a mass market book published last November by National Geographic and on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and other main stream book stores. The author has hosted shows about Egyptology on The Discovery Channel. She is an ardent feminist and committed Leftist and this waste of printed paper was an attempt to mix a banal misreading of Egyptian history with an attempt to bash Trump and his supporters. I took a look at the book just last week and put it down with disgust when I realized what it was. She and her publisher have made a statement of fact that is untrue, and that would have been found to be untrue with a few seconds of google search. This can be construed as actual malice, which in this case would be reckless indifference to the fact that what was stated was untrue. That opens the door to punitive damages, and leaps over the fact that Rittenhouse might be considered a public figure. Should have stuck to libeling pharaohs you don’t like Prof. Ancient Egyptians don’t sue, contemporary Americans do.
Enjoy the Libel Suit Professor
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
She is an ardent feminist and committed Leftist and this waste of printed paper was an attempt to mix a banal misreading of Egyptian history with an attempt to bash Trump and his supporters. I took a look at the book just last week and put it down with disgust when I realized what it was. She and her publisher have made a statement of fact that is untrue, and that would have been found to be untrue with a few seconds of google search.
Her editors at National Geographic should have prevented not only the factual error, but the publication of a book of that character. No serious scholar would produce such a tome. We’re living in an age wherein our word-merchant class is chock-a-block with people who have personality problems and tenured faculty positions are occupied by Bourbons begging for the guillotine.
Barnes was very skeptical that Rittenhouse could ever prevail in any defamation suits due to his status as a one-time defendant.
Pick the right venue and I think he could get a sympathetic jury. This book has been published across the nation. The worst thing to public reputation today is to be accused of being a racist. Also this is the type of factual error which isn’t opinion, the frequent stumbling block in defamation cases. National Geographic is a deep pocket and unused to litigation. There is abundant money to be made here for a shrewd attorney.
National Geographic is a deep pocket and unused to litigation. There is abundant money to be made here for a shrewd attorney.
If you say so. I’m recalling the interview E. Howard Hunt once gave to Larry King. He said he’d been involved in one defamation suit in the course of his life, he’d lost, and the experience was such that no matter what people said about him, he would never again be involved in such a suit.
I’m hoping in ten years Kyle is settled into a trade that pays the bills, settled into married life and fatherhood, and can afford on his property a cottage or granny flat for his mother out back.
Biographical trivia, or, the people you run across.
Long ago in a galaxy far a way I used to work in the same office suite as Jeffrey Williams, who was the Society’s G-C from 2016 to 2020. He grew up in the same town my grandfather did and we have friends in common, though we haven’t spoken since 1995 or therabouts. He has bounced around quite a bit in his career, changing jobs every 3 or 4 years (no clue what that means). The current president of the Society is Jill Tiefenthaler; I haven’t crossed paths with her in 15 years or more, but once upon a time I was congenial with her husband. Her predecessor a couple of times removed was Gilbert Grosvenor, a friend of my mother’s 70 years back; she did not keep in touch with him, but she did with his late sister-in-law. The Society was criticized during his tenure for refusing to adopt what might be called a culture of critique in its publications. “We’ll still be on the sunny side of the street” is how he answered such complaints. He is still alive, so I wonder what he makes of the Society’s slide into woke in the 25 years since he retired.
Not long after Jill T took over, Jeff Williams left for a job with a firm which produces veterinary medicines. Someone needs to suggest to Jill T that the Society is employing a couple of editors it would do well to cut loose. Unless of course they’re doing just what she wants them to be doing, which would be distressing.
It’s a pretty standard leftist play to blatantly lie, and then when caught claim to only be “Starting a conversation.”
Probably the most prominent example of this happening was the UVA rape scandal. When it was revealed that the accusations were completely fraudulent in every respect, the uniform media response was to say “But it got us talking about the rape epidemic at colleges! You don’t support rape, do you?”
While we’re at it, the only race problem we have is the one manufactured by people on the Al Sharpton – Kara Cooney axis. Nothing done by ordinary Americans is generating a race problem. A great deal done by elites and clerisies is.
I hope young Mr. Rittenhouse is half as successful as Nick Sandmann in the monetary recoveries he realizes over the massive, intentional libels to which he was subjected.