Scumbags to be sure but this thing is going to get flipped on appeal.
Really, it would have been shocking if this would have gone hte other way. Freedom of press or speech is not absolute and whose speech here? Gawker? Do they have the right to film someboyd doing whatever and then exploit it for profit? That is wrong on so many levels. So many.
A good indicator for private time is the following: If it involves sex and nudity and is not meant as porn for public consumption, then it is private. Itās really not that complicated. They should not have posted it.
2 Likes
Care to explain WTF youāre talking about when he was not at all aware that he was surreptitiously being recorded with a plan to use the tape to extort him in the future?
HH was not aware he was being taped. As much as I canāt stand the guy, he is the victim here.
2 Likes
He may not be a likable person, but itās disappointing to see how many people think that matters. Publishing a sex tape when one of the parties was unaware of the filming is reprehensible (and of absolutely no journalistic value). I question if some of the snarky commenters would dare make the same jokes if the āvictimā was a woman.
2 Likes
@Mxyztplk and @filthyneutrals: Iāve got no sympathy for either side. However when Hulk, I mean Mr. Bollea, says to Bubba, āYouāre not filming this, are you?ā, I kinda lose sympathy for him. If he suspected any taping at all, he should have zipped up and gotten the hell out of there.
This is the same error in language use as appears in the main AP story. What is extorted is the pelf or other gain that an extortionist may receive from the victim; it is not the victim that is extorted.
That sounds unreasonable to me when this was his best friend at the time. You usually donāt suspect your best friend of lying to you because heās planning on blackmailing you in the future.
Thanks for correction, āblackmailā would have been the appropriate word here.
He was having sex with his friends wife no? There is something(s) not so innocent about that.
At his friendās invitation. He was having a bad day and his best friend at that time invited him to come over and have sex with his wife.
You can look down on his unconventional swinger lifestyle and call it ānot so innocentā if you find the high horse to be your mount in life. Personally, I donāt consider it my place to judge anyone elseās lifestyle so long as consenting adults are involved and no one gets hurt.
Thatās where this story goes off the rails for me, as thereās only one person here that got hurt, and that would be the victim Terry Bollea. Who he thought were his friends were nothing more than sleazy profiteers.
First Amendment experts, media lawyers and privacy advocates watched the cĢ¶aĢ¶sĢ¶eĢ¶ tape closely.
Fixed it for yaā
Did Terry not know who was dealing with? Yes he did.
He put himself into a weird place and a really strange outcome became of it.
Iām not judging and am far from riding some high horse, Iām just saying that he literally got into bed with some seedy characters and they did what people like that do.
You are basically prejudging me back about supposedly being judgmental and all I did was ask a question. Plus you say as long as no one gets hurt and then proceed to make your whole argument about the guy that got hurt. You are arguing for and against for a person that you admit that you can not stand?
Eh? Does this really need explaining? Hereās what I said:
I said the story goes off the rails for me, meaning that Iām judging his friend and his wife to be a sleaze bags because of their victimization of Bollea. My judgement of them is entirely based on their attempt to profiteer off of Bollea during a vulnerable time in his life while dealing with a divorce and generally being down on himself. Judging his faux friends based on their behavior is entirely justified.
But it should be clear from what I said that Iām not judging Bollea on his lifestyle. He was clearly the victim here.
I wasnāt sure if you were speaking from a high horse or not, which is why I posed it as a proposition. The irony is that you kind of confirmed that you were by strongly implying that swingers are by nature āseedy charactersā so as to justify your victim blaming.
Wrong again and I will explain since you did.
1, I really could give a rats ass, so I have no dog in this fight and donāt need to win.
2, You arenāt even considering the fact that the Hulkster did something stupid and got burned. Your own argument makes that case. It is at least partially his own fault, heās a big boy.
3, You call them sleaze bags (like thatās better) and I used the term seedy. What difference do our insults really make that means anything?
4, you are judging, exactly what you accused me of and you express that clearly.
5, there was no high horse, there is no irony and you canāt see the forest for the trees IMO.
I stopped and put more thought into this and I say, the Hulkster shoulda kept it in his pants or found a less precarious playmate. Iām not judging at all, if he wants to hump his way through all of his friends wives thatās Kool and the Gang, but he would still be playing with fire.