What Kind Of Sicko Violates His Wife's Privacy Like This?
Kevin Roderick at the Los Angeles mediawatch site, LA Observed, links to a bizarre full-page ad in the LA Times -- a husband-to-wife letter with loads of personal information. (Full view of the ad is there at his site.)
It took me about three seconds on Google to figure out who they are.
As I wrote in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," private citizens who have done nothing wrong (in a sense of injuring the public or another person) have a right to privacy:
Brandeis and Warren explained that a person has a right--a natural human right--to determine to what extent their thoughts, opinions, and emotions and the details of their "private life, habits, acts, and relations" will be communicated to others. They noted that this right to privacy comes out of our right to be left alone and that it applies whether an individual's personal information is "expressed in writing, or in conduct, in conversation, in attitudes, or in facial expression."This has not changed because of what's now technically possible: how it takes just a few clicks to Facebook or Instagram an embarrassing photo of a person or blog their medical history, sexual orientation, sex practices, financial failings, lunch conversation, or daily doings. No matter how fun and easy the technology makes immediately publishing everything about everyone and no matter how common it's become to violate everyone's right to privacy, each person's private life remains their own and not a free commodity to be turned into content by the rest of us.
Your mental health, marital issues, and health problems are most certainly among the things that are most private.
Your assessment? Is this an attack on the wife meant to look like a mea culpa and a longing to make things work out?
(Doesn't this seem like a note that could be left on the kitchen counter or slipped under the door? There is such a thing as a "costly signal" -- needless extravagance (like a diamond wedding ring) that sends a message that some message is probably not a put-on -- but the guy would have been spending the couple's money, so it kind of fails at that.
And, finally, vis a vis the privacy violation, do you think anybody at the LA Times had any responsibility to turn down the ad?
1. Smells to high heaven. No way do I believe that this is what it appears to be at first sight. FWIW, I would first suspect some sort of elaborate prank, or perhaps a deliberate attempt or shot-across-the-bows, whose ultimate purpose is as-yet unknown.
2. The LA Times is a private concern and they get to decide what people can pay to have printed in their paper. They regularly print material which falls under the definition of 'private' that's being discussed here, often material obtained by underhanded means.
In this context, 'private' is an agreement made and maintained between individuals, but it has no force and any one of them can breach it at any time of their choosing. Neither we, nor the LA Times, has anything to say about it. If the author of this item had chosen instead to print 1000 copies of it at their local Kinkos and leaflet the windshields of the neighborhood with it, would you fault Kinkos for a 'privacy violation'?
3. Not our problem, not our concern. The printed equivalent of the guy who talks to himself in the parking lot at Home Depot. Whatver the issue at play are here, they are between other people and , in the immortal words of John Lee Hooker, 'they don't confront me none.' FIDO. Ignore.
llater,
llamas
llamas at June 2, 2016 6:27 AM
In the days of yore, any respectable journal would have refused the ad. (I'll leave it to the jury to decide whether the Los Angeles Times was ever a respectable journal...) However, even if they had turned down the ad, it would not have mattered much. There are a million places the guy could have posted the material, like Facebook, or failing that, 4chan or Reddit. It would have been an Internet sensation for a few hours. In a way, the guy shot himself in the foot doing what he did, because people who don't read newspapers (which is most people these days) either won't see it or won't care.
I can foresee a future in which privacy is simply impossible. The combination of records retention by every professional you interact with, plus government surveillance, means that everything is going to be available about everyone. However, that situation is subject to being gamed: overwhelm the system with a bunch of information about yourself that looks plausible but is false: I'm gay, I'm trans, I'm a pedophile, I rob banks, I cut purses, I shoot heroin, I disparage Latinos, I'm in the Klan, I don't provide trigger warnings, I'm secretly a Green Lantern. (OK, that last one probably isn't plausible, but...)
I could see coders developing rumor generators that will generate thousands of plausible rumors about a person and plant them in strategic places around the Net. The system will be so overwhelmed with information about a person, most of it false, that unless/until search engines get a whole lot better, it won't be possible to discern what info about any one person is true. And then everyone will ignore most of it.
Cousin Dave at June 2, 2016 7:09 AM
If it's a genuine attempt to apologize, it is one of the most clumsy, ill-advised attempts I've ever seen. In this case, Bruce missed the mark by more than a mile.
Seems more likely this is a huge "Yeah, but.." response. He gets to claim he made an apology, but reveals her flaws and problems to show what a saintly man he was to put up with it all. The whole thing just seems skeezy and manipulative.
As to the LA Times's concerns, print media is struggling, the only review this probably got was whether Bruce's check cleared.
bkmale at June 2, 2016 7:09 AM
I would suggest he sleep with one eye open. Or he might find his wife making a breakfast dish called Rocky Mountain oysters.
Oh, honey, you don't need your balls to live.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 2, 2016 7:37 AM
Also, those kids named in here had their privacy violated as well.
Amy Alkon at June 2, 2016 9:58 AM
> Kevin Roderick at the Los Angeles
> mediawatch site, LA Observed, links
> to a bizarre full-page ad
What am I, chopped liver?
Crid at June 2, 2016 11:09 AM
My bet is that this is "viral" marketing for a shitty movie.
Shtetl G at June 2, 2016 11:11 AM
by coincidence, i've just printed out the "Public Disclosure" section of the privacy laws to give to a friend who doesn't understand she doesn't have a right to publish highly personal (beyond embarrassing) details about a guy she is pissed off at.
i've come at it from the moral, ethical and legal angles, but she doesn't want to hear it.
if she does publish she will be an ex-friend.
rosalind at June 2, 2016 12:47 PM
Yes to the last question. It would be nice if the victim sued the Times and won. Not that I believe she would win, but she ought to.
jdgalt at June 2, 2016 5:08 PM
On what grounds could she sue? I assume there are severs possibilities.
I have seen men post things like this on Facebook--groveli g apologies to their girlfriend or wife, paragraphs long. "An Open Letter to Clarissa," etc. I think they're getting the idea from romantic movies where the man makes a grand public gesture to redeem himself. I don't like being a captive audience to someone else's mortification, but that's Facebook.
Those guys are sincere. This guy...maybe she required an apology and he decided to stick it to her.
Insufficient Poison at June 3, 2016 4:22 AM
That letter was really, really boring.
Pirate Jo at June 3, 2016 1:15 PM
☑ PJ
Also, it's weird to me that Facebook is regarded as "public." I mean it obviously is, but for many it seems to have become the primary expression of their relationship to other people in the realm between intimate and distant stranger... As if Facebook status affirms more meaning than, say, a wedding ring, or being seen out on the town.
Crid at June 4, 2016 12:52 AM
And as I was typing that, I figured out why: Metrics! How many friends do *you* have? It's all very theatrical.
Sincere affection usually isn't about third parties.
Crid at June 4, 2016 12:54 AM
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