The Dumb and the Reckless

Katy Johnson is a former Ms. Vermont and author of a series of preposterous, almost self-parodying cartoons pitching Bill Bennett style values in doggerel rhyme. Tucker Max is a full-time Lothario whose website is a catalog of debauchery, libertinism, and conscience-free womanizing. What, beyond being people I'm vaguely glad I don't know, could these two possibly have in common?

Well, according to Max, an ill-fated relationship whose details would make it a poor candidate for the Book of Virtues. When Max posted his account of that relationship, Johnson sued. Not for libel, mind you, but invasion of privacy. This is doubly weird, first because Johnson is unambiguously a public figure, and second because the legal theory behind her suit implies that people can be forbidden from writing accurate memoirs of their own lives.

Johnson both succeeded and failed. Astonishingly, a judge issued a court order requiring Max to take down his story and delete all references to Johnson from his site. But even if that order isn't reversed on appeal, which it almost certainly will be, it hasn't exactly had the intended effect. The story has now been written up in the New York Times, and a mirror of Max's account, in all its seamy detail, has already been posted. Moral of this cartoon: legal bullying to squelch inconveinient speech is ugly, even from a beauty queen.