"A Manhattan man who sued because his real-life identity was outed on MTV's 'True Life: I'm a Chubby Chaser'..."

"... is fat out of luck, a Manhattan judge has ruled."

Tristan Watson and roommate Nadine Crosbie filed suit against the reality show's producers last year, claiming they were duped into thinking their home address would not be shown and that Watson would only be identified by the name "Tee" on the show, which focused on people who intentionally seek out extra-plump partners.

Of course, MTV makes anyone participating in this sort of show sign a written contract agreeing not to sue about anything, and the lawsuit was always doomed... which make you wonder why — if he were truly so troubled about getting outed — he'd sue, making his identity even more well known. I'd have never heard of this character if I hadn't seen this news report about the lawsuit. One must conclude that he wanted the publicity. He participated in the show, and then he drew even more attention to himself.

Watson claimed that he received a death threat "slipped under the front of his door of his apartment," but as the top comment says: "Why would he receive a death threat because he's a chubby chaser? That makes absolutely no sense." That question gets a funny reply: "maybe it was 'Fit Mom' threatening him, LOL."

(Do you know about "Fit Mom," the lady who got temporarily banned from Facebook for complaining about media boosting the self-esteem of fat people people of fatness?)

(That last link goes to Jezebel, where I am struggling very hard to resist the temptation to click on the "top story" in the sidebar: "The Epic, Disgusting Removal of a Blackhead 25 Years in the Making." Talk about the need for will power!)

"Since Shirley Sherrod is going after Andrew Breitbart's widow..."

"... here's a Pigford roundup."

Perfect.

Taunting the litigious.

Seems dangerous.

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil..."

"... it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube."

That's the quote from "Atlas Shrugged" that Ted Cruz read on the Senate floor during his (it's not a) filibuster. We talked about it here, and it sprang to mind this morning as I was reading Rich Lowry's column "Stubborn democrats escaping all the blame in shutdown":

Refusing to negotiate is the new reasonableness.

After years of agonized media commentary about the failure of key players in Washington to sit down and work out their differences, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to win the fight over the government shutdown by rejecting all compromise, calling his opponents names and escaping blame in the press.

Eric Cantor, do not try this at home. It is a gambit available only to Democrats, who are presumed, almost by definition, to be free of any responsibility for a shutdown....

Appreciation for standing on principle depends on whether your principle is appreciated. It's right there in the Ayn Rand quote: There is food and poison, good and evil. We've got to believe you're the food, the good, before we admire your refusal to compromise. 

The media aren't going to see the Republicans as serving the food and the Democrats as serving the poison, so in the media, the refusal to compromise is always going to be bad for Republicans and good for Democrats. As usual, the conservatives have to fight against the media, and of course, Lowry knows that.

It's possible to use media opposition in a positive way, some jujitsu move. It needs to be something better than the usual whining that the media is against you. But what?

There's "a line between rhetorical hyperbole and defamation."

Said the court that let the climate scientist Michael Mann — he of the "hockey stick" — to continue with his lawsuit against the National Review. 

The court...  pointed to terminology such as “whitewashed,” “intellectually bogus,” “ringmaster of the [tree]-ring circus” and “cover-up” as “more than rhetorical hyperbole.”

The linked article miscorrects the joke "tree-ring circus" to "three-ring circus." Here's the blog post  that drove Mann to file a lawsuit — Mark Steyn calling attention to some football-and-hockey bad-taste humor.

"Photographer sues BuzzFeed for $3.6M over viral sharing model."

"The copyright issues poses a threat to BuzzFeed and similar websites, including Upworthy and For the Win, which have an editorial model based on finding content — especially images — that readers are likely to share on social media."

Last year, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti explained to the Atlantic that the site pays to license images from companies like Reuters and Getty, but that it also pulls from amateur sites like Tumblr and Flickr. In these cases, the provenance of the images can be unclear — in some cases, the photographer has made them available for public use while other times the author is simply unknown.

Ramzi Yousef, convicted after the 1993 WTC bombing, sues for relief from solitary confinement.

He'll never get out of prison, but — after 15 years — should he get out of solitary confinement? But that's not the question asked in a lawsuit. To win the lawsuit, a court has to deprive government of the choice to treat him like that.

Colin Dayan, a humanities professor at Vanderbilt University who has studied solitary confinement in Arizona, said many prison administrations use isolation without regard to psychological damage to inmates.

"You no longer know what's real," she said. "You can't speak to anyone; you can't touch anyone: your senses no longer have any outlet. You have delusions and become psychotic. Your mind deteriorates."

After his arrest, Yousef — who expected the death penalty — told FBI agents that he had intended "to topple one tower into the other, and cause a total of 250,000 civilian deaths."

"The jelly looked like pus, the peanut butter like God knows what and the bread was hard as a rock..."

So says Frank Hannibal, describing the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in jail, where he was sent after he joked about his expensive peanut butter. When the TSA agent at LaGuardia Airport opened the jar, Hannibal said "They’re looking to confiscate my explosives."

What idiot doesn't know not to joke about bombs in the airport security line? Now, this guy is suing for $5 million.

This lawsuit looks like pus. There. Whatever judge gets stuck with it is welcome to use my joke against this phenomenally stupid man who purports to be a connoisseur of humor and peanut butter. Hannibal should have to reimburse the taxpayers for all the public money he's consumed and will continue to consume.

Donald Trump says he's suing Bill Maher for $5 million after Trump accepted his offer, making a valid contract.

The "offer," made last month, was to "pay $5 million to Trump’s charity of choice if he provided a birth certificate proving that he’s not 'spawn of his mother having sex with orangutan.'"

Maher was comically commenting on Trump's offer to pay $5 million to Obama's charity of choice if Obama releases his college records.

This lawsuit news is, of course, Trump, once again, hogging — orangutanning — the media spotlight. Fine. I don't care. But to actually file a lawsuit is: 1. An offense against free speech, and 2. An irresponsible appropriation of the public wealth that will be consumed processing the lawsuit.

“I don’t think he was joking. He said it with venom. That was venom. That wasn’t a joke. In fact, he was nervous when he said it. It was a pathetic delivery,” Trump said on Fox News.

Speaking of pathetic... go away, Donald. And take your hair with you when you leave.