Chew with your mouth closed, Yankee

I just want to acknowledge that over the past week I've completely failed at taking pictures. It's not that I didn't have my camera with me, because I did. It's just that either the situation was so terribly unpicture-worthy that I couldn't even be motivated to take my camera from my bag, or otherwise that day's class location happened to prohibit pictures - and I, deciding to take a stab at the whole responsibility thing, played by the rules of a law-abiding citizen.

Monday morning falls into the first category. It's hard to get jazzed about photography in a small, poorly lit room in the back of the press club. Especially when the panelists are conservatively dressed and relatively demure (in comparison to some of our other, slightly more pictorially engaging guests).

Honestly, it's hard to get jazzed about anything on a foggy Monday morning, especially when you've miscalculated travel time, thus forcing you to forgo your now disgustingly essential daily caffeine intake.

This made the 9:30 lecture on media law even more difficult than it needed to be. Court cases, statutes, lawsuits, section suchandsuch of legislative bill soandso...really tough stuff to ingest given the current circumstances.

Which is a shame, really, because the title of the mini-forum was "How to Stay Out of Court" - a fairly important topic, not just for journalists, but sort of in general. Even important enough, I'd venture, to stay awake for.

And some areas were pretty interesting. Like, did you know that someone can sue an anonymous commenter (such as on an online news story)? Apparently, they literally sue "John Doe". No joke.

And have you heard of this family down south that's going around protesting soldiers' funerals, because they vehemently claim that the soldiers' deaths are God's way of punishing us for homosexuality? Lovely, right? But even more interestingly, it's up to the lawyers who spoke to us to defend these bigots, because in doing so, they're defending the right to free speech and freedom of the press.

Frankly, not a job I'd be real gung-ho about doing. I would however, like to avoid being sued, so the info that Laurie Babinski (funnily enough, a former newspaper editor) and Gregg Leslie (no comment for this space) relayed did have some crucial relevance.

I essentially came away with the understanding that if I don't want any trouble, I should avoid insulting anyone's reputation. Apparently most lawsuits aren't a business issue, but instead one based on a tarnished personal image. Internationally, though, this isn't so much of a problem, because many countries actually have "insult laws", which stop you from saying outrageous things about a person, even if they're true.

Even if they're true.

So really, they have the legal written form of our mother's "if you can't say anything nice..." tidbit of wisdom from the good ol' days.

Imagine that. Americans being rude. How novel.

My one covert attempt at a picture, and a perfect example of why I don't make "covert attempts at pictures" more often.