From the underrated dark comedy Pretty Persuasion (2004):
Kimberly: Randa, what’s the greatest thing about this country?
Randa: Sylvester Stallone?
Kimberly: No. It’s that anybody can sue anybody at anytime over anything.
Perhaps (or perhaps not) relatedly: the tale of driving instructor Norman Swerling, acquitted of raping one of his students. The school district paid him $250,000 to stay at home instead of returning to work. (Keith O’Brian, “Not Guilty”, Boston Globe, Jul. 9).
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And yet we still persist with the fallacy that some people making serious allegations cannot have their identity revealed. There has got to be some ballance to this. The stigma of being raped is nothing so bad as the stigma of being accused of rape. This is not to say rape victims do not suffer greatly, merely that there now is little or no social stigma attached to the event; the accused, regardless of the findings of the justice system will always suffer social stigma.
No Pulitzer Prize here for the Boston Globe. True or not, the publication can’t pass itself off as “journalism.” Or maybe it could in a junior high school newspaper….