Oh God, When Will It End?...

Oh sweet lord, not another story about the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown relationship. Please Tony, step down. Step down now. If not for the country, do it for me.

Every Hack's Nightmare

First, a disclaimer. I do not know Timothy L. O'Brien at all. I don't know anyone who knows him and let's be honest, though small and respectable, the organization I work for is about as close to the New York Times in clout as the earth is to Alpha Centauri. However, if he ever felt like writing me a letter of recomendation, I'd have no problem with that.

That being said, you have to have a lot of sympathy for the guy. Sometimes, a hack gets something wrong (the number of people at a meeting) and sometimes they get it incredibly wrong (describing a straight, Irish guy as black and gay). That's life down at the factory and if you're lucky, you get a chance to grovel shamelessly and keep coming in every day.

On the other hand, the worst case scenario is when you get everything right, every last fact, and some guy still decides to sue you. That exactly is what is happening right now. Timothy O'Brien wrote TrumpNation, a great book about Donald Trump, it comes out late last year, and now the Donald is suing. Apparently, he's a little upset at being described as only having $250 million to his name when, gosh darn it, he's a billionaire!

Please. This is a suit which is going to get thrown out of court at the earliest opportunity. I'm sure O'Brien nailed down his net worth down pretty good and besides, isn't the Donald a two-time corporate bankrupt?

Really. This is one of those libel suits which give libel suits a bad name.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

On the other hand, to be honest, sometimes we're a lot easier than we like to admit. On some of the more frivolous stories, I'll talk to anyone as long as they're good with quotes. I mean, I might strongly suspect that an "organization" is nothing more than one man, a website and a dream ("The North Kensington Anti-Fur Alliance!") but as long they don't come out and actually say it, who's to know?

Really, not to mention a killer deadline, I've got my own delusions of grandeur. Who am I to burst someone's bubble? Dare to dream, buddy.