Friday, May 2, 2008

The Price of Justice

As we've noted here, a long and expensive prosecution of comic book retailer Gordon Lee finally ended recently with all charges being dismissed. It was costly for the city of Rome, Georgia to put Lee on trial and costly for Lee and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to get the case tossed outta court, where it never should have been in the first place.

When a prosecutor loses a case, it doesn't automatically mean that they were wrong to press it in the first place but there are also Bad Faith prosecutions, and cases where the "corrective" is grossly out of proportion to the alleged crime. Did Leigh Patterson, the Floyd County district attorney who pushed this matter and kept it going so long and with so many examples of prosecutorial misconduct, actually believe she was punishing a genuine wrong? If so, she was wrong.

But it seems likely that she was even wronger than that; that she knew it was a trivial matter, unworthy of the courts, and went forward because it seemed like an easy win, a way to beat up on a little guy who — had the CBLDF not come to his aid — would not have been able to mount much of a defense.

Prosecutors like to go after putative pornographers, especially when they can claim to be protecting children. Those are generally easy cases to win — a lot simpler than corporate crime or peddling illegal weaponry or even most crimes of violence — but you have to pick your targets carefully. In most cities, one can view X-rated movies on the in-room TV sets at the Marriott or Hyatt or Holiday Inn, and surely minors occasionally catch a glimpse or two. But no one ever prosecutes the Marriott. The Marriott has money. You can see lots of dirty movies on DirecTV, and kids do on occasion, but no one suggests handcuffing John Malone, chairman of the company that owns DirecTV. Why? Because John Malone has a couple billion dollars with which to hire good lawyers. It's a lot easier to go after someone like Gordon Lee who, had it not been for the CBLDF, would not have much of a defense.

In this editorial, the hometown newspaper of Gordon Lee and Leigh Patterson laments what a case like this does to the image of their city and adds, "The only true offense has been to the sensibilities of local taxpayers." They're right, and we shouldn't let the fact that Mr. Lee is free mean that this case can be forgotten. Because tomorrow, some other prosecutor will be looking for a quick victory as the protector of the tiny tots. And that prosecutor will go after someone else they think can't fight back.

• Posted at 10:50 AM · LINK

Danton Burroughs, R.I.P.

Danton Burroughs — the grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs and a major force in keeping that man's work alive — left us Wednesday evening at the age of 64. He had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease for some time and died at his home in Tarzana, a suburb named for his grandfather's legendary creation. He was the son of John Coleman Burroughs, who was himself distinguished in the arts as a photographer and illustrator.

I worked several times for and with the Burroughs estate, writing and/or editing comic books of Tarzan and Korak. I wish I could say that Danton and I always got along but we often clashed and of course, since he was who he was, he usually (maybe always) got his way. But I always respected his passion for the family legacy and not just because there was a good living to be made from it. He was genuinely dedicated to that legacy for all the best reasons and if you do a little Googling, you'll find dozens of websites that attest to his generosity in perpetuating the work of his pa and grandpa, and sharing it all with the world.

Thanks to Jim Van Hise for sending me the sad news so I could share it with you here.

• Posted at 9:53 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I have a whole bunch of Tom Lehrer links to post here. This is Mr. Lehrer with a funny song about venereal disease...

• Posted at 9:06 AM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Russ Maheras writes...

I can't figure out why Democrats gloat so much about Bush's disapproval ratings. Democrats control both the House and the Senate, and their ratings are worse than Bush's.

Democrats gloat about as much about Bush's disapproval ratings as Republicans do when it's a Democrat whose numbers are in the commode. In this case, it's vindication, it's a big "I told you so," it's a big slap at all those who told us that the war would pay for itself, there were weapons of mass destruction, tax cuts for the rich would help the lower class, it was "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, etc. No one in politics ever misses an opportunity to do a happy dance when the other side is losing big.

The difference between a low approval rating for Congress and one for Bush is that the latter affects the upcoming election. True, Bush isn't running but a guy who advocates many (most?) of his policies is. Come October, will John McCain still be defending all those Bush decisions that even diehard Republicans now regret? Or to distance himself from the guy with the (by then) 75%+ disapproval rating, will McCain be sounding like Keith Olbermann trashing the Bush administration? My own guess is that once McCain has locked up the nomination, gotten what he can get in campaign contributions from the extreme right and dodged the threat of a significant "third party" Conservative draining votes from him, we're going to see McCain move sharply to the left.

Either that or we're going to see that photo of him hugging George W. more often that we saw the one of Britney Spears minus her undies.

In the meantime, America may disapprove of the current Congress but they're going to vote to re-elect 95% of it. I don't like it either but they always do.

• Posted at 9:04 AM · LINK

Go Read It!

At this moment, a nice article about Jack Kirby (and my book about him) is one of the top stories over on the CNN homepage. It's by Todd Leopold and I thank him for it.

Also, I fixed a couple of broken links in this post which directed you to some of what others have written about Kirby: King of Comics.

• Posted at 8:41 AM · LINK