Lowell Feld accuses me of defamation. My response? Bring it.

Yesterday, I posted a story accusing Lowell Feld over at Blue Virginia of using the two racist emails he received from unknown sources of using racism as a weapon against Scott Rigell in the VA-2 race.

Today, in a poorly spelled, spluttering response, he calls J.R. and I extremists, and accuses us of defamation.  Why? Because I speculated about his motives for releasing those emails and then trying to link them to Scott Rigell two weeks before an election – the textbook definition of an October surprise.

My response? Well, after I laughed and told my wife to come read the story, my response was pretty straight forward: bring it.  You want to waste your time and money pursuing what is, at best, a frivilous suit, I have no problems defending myself.  Hell, I’ll do it pro se, and if you actually find an attorney willing to file this stinkbomb, I’d strongly consider filing for 8.01-271.1 sanctions on him as soon as the case is thrown out on demurrer, if it even gets that far.  Let me save you $500, Lowell – a five minute review of defamation law in Virginia will demonstrate that there’s no case here.  Everything I said was my opinion.

Lowell is simply trying to deflect criticism from himself.  He knows he was used and he doesn’t much care.  And while he can claim as much as he wants that he’s a progressive and hates Glenn Nye, anyone who has read Blue Virginia for more than five minutes recognizes that the blog is a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party in Virginia, and anything he can do to tear down a Republican, any Republican, is fine by him.  That’s why he routinely bans Republicans who post on the site (as he did me months ago), and why he’s been running multiple stories attacking Rigell (see a few here and here).  If Lowell wants to try and pretend that he’s not supporting Glenn Nye, thats fine, but when he posts stuff about Scott Rigell saying “[t]he question for 2nd CD voters is this: do you want an uninformed, extreme, slippery, used-car salesman representing you in Congress the next two years?  No, didn’t think so[,]” I don’t get the feeling he’s suggesting folks in the 2nd vote for Kenny Golden.

The timing of the release of these emails is questionable.  If this had simply been the Bartholomew email, I wouldn’t have said a thing.  As I have noted multiple times on Bearing Drift, Common Sense and Twitter, I was appalled by that email and I was happy that Bartholomew stepped down – racism has no place in politics, in either party.  No one is ignoring the “frontstory” here – the frontstory was over.  Bartholomew stepped down.  But when another email shows up the next day, Lowell takes the time to screenshot Scott Rigell’s website before he gets the story up, and DPVA drops a statement based on the story in less than ten minutes – what are any of us supposed to think?  What looked like a one off slip of judgment on behalf of one local Republican leader becomes a coordinated smear campaign.  What does it say that the first inclination of both Lowell and DPVA was to link both of these stories to Scott Rigell?

The fact that Lowell did absolutely no checking of his source or even possibly considered he was being used is laughable.  What kind of a “journalist” posts a story and then, when he’s challenged on it, says “Why I only received the email on October 18, 2010, I have no idea. If anyone would like to look into this and let us all know, that would be great. Personally, I’d be curious.”  Really?  You won’t release the source’s identity, and you’re the only one (other than the source) who knows who the source is, but it’s up to the rest of us to guess and then ask him why he waited months?

What a joke.

As I noted yesterday, racism is wrong and the jokes and videos sent out damaged far more than simply VBRC, David Bartholomew, Karen Beauchamp or Scott Rigell.  They hurt the entire Republican party because they let the Democrats maintain the false claim that all of us are racists.  That’s not true, but that doesn’t stop them from running those stories.

And while I know that racism is wrong, I also know that trying to use racism to score political points is also wrong.  Ending racism should be apolitical and bipartisan – something all Americans do and believe in because it’s the right thing to do.  Lowell, by not questioning his source and just blindly running to the internet without even pausing to wonder why he was being given this email at this time, let himself be used to smear Scott Rigell.  That’s unethical, and anyone who claims to be a “journalist” should be offended that someone believed they were that easy to manipulate.  But, then again, it’s probably not hard to manipulate someone who, by all appearances, wants to be manipulated.  And by linking the stories to Scott Rigell when the link to his campaign is tenuous at best, Lowell and DPVA demonstrated both their desperation and their willingness to do or say anything, no matter how ridiculous, to try and benefit their candidates.  That’s sad.

Oh, one more thing.  I do owe Lowell a big thank you – whenever anyone in my party calls me a RINO for my stance on social issues, like my criticism of Ken Cuccinelli for his letter to Virginia’s colleges on their anti-discrimination policies, my defense of moderates like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, or my post applauding the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell decision, I can point to this post where you call me an “extreme right wingnut.”  Thanks for rehabilitating me in the eyes of my colleagues.

(Edited to use the Virginia civil procedure terms)

PS – Congrats to all of my CUA colleagues who passed the VA bar!

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