This ad, from the all-female law firm Schroder Joseph & Associates LLP in Buffalo, N.Y., stuck out to readers who spotted it in various legal journals since it began appearing last spring.
One headline asks, "Ever Argue with a Woman?," while the one pictured reads, "Labor Pains? Talk to us. (We’re women . . . We get it)." They were supposed to be "a little edgy and funny," but now they're engaged in a debate over gender stereotyping. By playing up the strengths of the all-lady operation, critics say they're strengthening sexist notions.
And also, could this open the door for all-male law firms (which is to say, "law firms") create their own series of spots to play up their strengths? CONTINUED »
Didja hear? The English are fucking loaded, and their currency is twice the man the dollar is. In fact, so rich and well fed are they that their chubby fingers, slippery with meat fat, render useless the remote controls they use to power their expensive televisions, thereby causing them to go practically deaf every time a loud commercial comes on.
In Britain, regulators moved this month to dial down the volume of television commercials. The Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, which sets guidelines for the industry, adopted a new rule saying that TV ads should not be “excessively noisy or strident.”
And if the stations don't follow the rules? A distinctly British consequence: nothing!
In theory, the authority can forward cases to Ofcom, the British media regulator, which can impose sanctions on offenders. But such action rarely occurs in cases involving advertising …
See what bureaucrats do when they get far too much money in the coffers? Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing.
Albany lawmakers have got your back when it comes to keeping online search and ad firms from mining data about which porn sites you visit. [NYT]
Joy Douglas, a woman from Boulder, Colorado, is fighting a $1,000 fine she received for dyeing her dog Cici pink. Using just beet juice and Kool-Aid, she turned her poodle into a crappily-colored pink pooch, which could be illegal under a city ordinance aimed at keeping people from dyeing rabbits and chicks around Easter. Or bringing Paris Hilton's lifestyle into city borders. [AP]
KEEP THAT JUNK IN YOUR TRUNK Watch out, serial subway flashers. The City Council just upped the penalty for committing lewd acts in public more than once in a three year period. Judges can now sentence you to a year in jail, three years probation and/or a $1G fine. So if you can, try to space those perversions out. [Gothamist]
Having had some time to reflect on what he's done, money siphoner Conrad Black is still fully convinced that he was well within his right to screw Hollinger International shareholders by pilfering over $7 million of company funds to spend entirely on himself. Why? Because, in the self-righteous words of Black himself, "'I will not re-enact the French Revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility."
Hear, hear!
Unfortunately, the concept of a "Robin Hood who steals from the rich and gives to the richer," failed to resonate with juries, and they convicted the pompous felon (now facing 20-30 years in federal prison) of myriad fraud charges. Natch, Black and his legal beagles have argued that it would be a miscarriage of justice to let the conviction stand, both because Black is innocent of any wrongdoing and slightly discomfited by the prospect of life in the pokey.
This just in: "The U.S. military says it will file a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an Associated Press photographer, but refuses to disclose the charges. The AP strongly protested the decision." In completely unrelated news, unlicensed (and typically uncredentialed) paprazzi are free to continue exercising their constitutional right to stalk people and sell invasive pictures of them for money. [Yahoo]
O.J. Simpson learns the hard way that, when you deal with unethical criminal persons, you run the risk that they'll eventually turn around and testify against you on the off chance that your tape-recorded, not very well executed armed robbery stint goes sour. Says (now former) friend-slash-accomplice Walter Alexander:
Out by the pool at the posh Palms resort a few hours before the alleged heist, “he asked me if I could watch his back,” after which “he leaned forward and it was kind of like, ‘Hey, do you think you can get some heat?’ ” Alexander testified. “‘Just in case things go wrong—just in case, you know, they may have heat, you know, can you bring some heat?’"
For those of you not in the know, "bring some heat" is tantamount to saying "bring a loaded firearm." Which, unfortunately for the Juice, pokes a gaping hole in O.J.'s "Gun? What gun?" and "I've been framed! Again!" defenses.
Although we can’t always shake the nasty habit of writing in the royal we, occasionally one of our editors decides to shake off the cloak of anonymity to write a short, pithy statement long, rambling diatribe about a topic of their choice. Today, Debbie Newman is that editor.
Last week, we learned that "Body Armor King" David Brooks siphoned over $200 million in company pension funds to support his "lavish lifestyle," including a staggering $10 million to pay for what his daughter's friends (despite since drifting to rival mean-girl cliques) still uniformly refer to as the "most awesome Bat Mitzvah EVER." Today, comes reassuring evidence that Brooks loves his two over-privileged children equally. His son's Jewish rite-of-passage reportedly broke the bank at over half million dollars.
And that was just to pay for shiksa goddess Jessica Simpson's off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday."
No longer content with merely swiping O.J. Simpson's Rolex, re-releasing his hypothetical confession out of spite, and leaving his fate up to the occasionally faulty American legal system, Fred Goldman has instructed his lawyers to look through his son's murderer's tax returns with a fine-toothed comb.
Because, as Mollygood puts it, "Besides tax authorities and golf resorts, the main party interested in Simpson’s income is Fred Goldman, the father of one of Simpson’s alleged murder victims, who strongly believes that bankrupting his son’s killer translates to justice."
You might think the only thing going in Washington is a lame (duck) President and disgraced Senators. But you’d be wrong!
Yesterday, the House passed the journalist shield law 398 to 21. The law would allow journalists to protect the confidentially of sources in most federal cases. As non-journalists, this law wouldn't really affect us. But we'd still like it to pass for the drama.
In a total departure from their usual stance toward journalists, the White House is against the law and has threatened a veto. It still has to get past the Senate before Bush will get a chance to play his “threat to national security" card.
[AP]
Two women drop their lawsuits against Joe Francis and "Girls Gone Wild" after an incriminating videotape exposes them as being willing participants, as well as "having a nice rack."*
Following the release of video footage that irrefutably proved they had given their consent to be filmed, two women (”floozies” according to TMZ) have dropped the lawsuits they had brought against Girls Gone Wild head Joe Francis and his company. Aside from making themselves look foolish, the women’s outright lies have instilled in the pornographer an even greater hatred of females. Look out, ladies.
For his part, Francis is expected to celebrate his legal coup with a giant misogynistic sex orgy. This time, preferably, with more attractive women. [Mollygood]
*Quotation marks (and made-up remarks) added for emphasis.
Former CBS exec producer Rome Hartman stopped by CNN's Reliable Source and shared his reactions to the Dan Rather lawsuit:
More than anything, it made me sad. I just — it made me sad for him and for CBS News. I don't understand why he would choose to dredge back into the spotlight what's undoubtedly going to be remembered as the darkest moment of his career and a very dark moment for CBS News.
Hartman's sentiments echo those over at rival networks, where an insider told us "people at ABC were surprised that he would risk further tarnishing his reputation with this lawsuit. Certainly not viewed as a wise move — more evidence that he 'doesn't get it.'"
Remember how Dan Rather was riding CBS and Katie Couric all these months like Lou Dobbs' Harvard-educated daughter at an equestrian competition, almost as though he had a giant "This is what happens when you're forced to resign in disgrace" stick up his ass?
Well, it turns out there was a method to his madness after all, or at least a reason for all that residual anger. It seems that as a result of Rather's network mandated, reputation-ruining exit fifteen months back, he's been suffering. So much so, in fact, that he's gone ahead and accused the network of making him the scapegoat for the "biased" and incomplete investigation of the infamous Guard broadcast.
Fortunately, however, Rather's found the perfect way to make everything right again: suing all the top CBS execs and asking for $70 million in damages.
In a closed hearing on Monday, Los Angeles judge Scott M. Gordon set a lengthy list of rules that parents Britney Spears and Kevin Federline must follow in order to retain custody of their sons, Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1.
Below is a list of the court's shared requirements (as summarized by Us Weekly) as well as our own unique brand of empathetic commentary.
Rule #1: "Neither Brit nor K-fed can take Sean and Jayden out of state without the written consent of the other."
Translation: "Next time you're going on a four-day Vegas bender, leave the kiddies at home."
Rule #2: "The exes cannot make derogatory statements about each other."
Translation: "Kevin Federline is no longer allowed to refer to Brit or the kids as 'Daddy's paycheck.'"
The Supreme Court of Indonesia orders Time magazine to pay $106 million in damages for "defaming former Indonesian dictator Suharto [who] seized power in a 1965 coup that left up to half a million people dead and ruled the country with an iron fist for the next three decades, killing or imprisoning hundreds of thousands of political opponents." Justice is served. [NYLawyer]
"Should readers boycott O.J. Simpson's book If I Did It when the proceeds are going directly to the family of victim Ron Goldman?" Denise Brown thinks so. The Goldman family (obviously) disagrees. Legal expert Julie Hilden is on hand to explore the quirky moral dilemma inherent in buying a book that was originally written with the express intent of capitalizing on a gruesome double-murder. [FL]
"A federal appeals court on Tuesday will consider whether a notorious "wardrobe malfunction" that bared singer Janet Jackson's breast during a televised 2004 Super Bowl halftime show was indecent, or merely a fleeting and accidental glitch that shouldn't be punished." They will politely refrain from considering the fact that it's BEEN OVER THREE YEARS and half the country is still up in arms over a millisecond of errant nipple.
[AP via LAT]
From CNN: "Former astronaut Lisa Nowak to pursue insanity defense on charges she assaulted and tried to kidnap romantic rival."
Wait, so the woman who woke up one morning, grabbed a couple of adult diapers and a handful of Triscuit crackers for the road, and drove nonstop from Houston to Orlando (nearly 1,000 miles!) all for the express purpose of inflicting severe bodily harm on her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend has decided to…plead insanity?
Yep, no one could have seen this one coming.
Editorial Director
