Sin City Schcadenfreude

It is not often that the Dowbrigade
feels obliged to defend a
previous posting. However, our posting of
yesterday concerning Cameron Diaz’s ongoing legal battle to keep
a revealing video off the internet market raised well-intentioned
concern on the part of some readers.

Their arguments were twofold. First,
the posting was in poor taste, featuring as it did gratuitous sex
and celebrity, and second, that even granting that poor taste may
be an indelible stain on our everlasting soul, maybe at least we
could tone it down during the build up to Convention Week, when surely
many
new readers would be visiting the site as the fleeting and fickle
searchlight of public attention swept briefly over our corner of
the blogosphere.

Let us take these arguments
one at a time. First, quite aside from our second amendment rights
to free sp each and freedom of the press, we find four convincing
reasons this story was post-worthy.

First, it is a real legal case,
not just some celebrity rumor or supermarket tabloid slander. An
injunction has been issued. All sorts of legal terms like "cease and
desist" and
"substantial
compensatory damage and punitive damages" appear in the narrative,
making it a legitimate story for the legal nature of my current teaching
assignment.

Second, the central nature of
the legal question is a topic near and dear to the Dowbrigade’s heart,
and in fact, potentially significant in our ability to continue doing
what we are doing right now – linking to primary news sources so
readers have the freedom to follow trails and investigate on their
own.

Third, we have always had a
fascination for the foibles of the rich and famous, which this story
tickles with a strange mixture of schadenfreude, that German word
that means taking delight in the misfortune of
others, American’s worship of celebrity, and a stubborn streak of
Puritan penance, the feeling that bad things will happen to people
who have too good a time.

Finally, it gave us a chance
to spice up this often boring political stuff with some attractively
displayed and photographed female breasts. Frankly, if you
are deeply offended by the sight of an uncovered female breast, you
are reading the wrong blog.

Not that the Dowbrigade News is pornographic
– far from it. All of the naked flesh revealed on these pages
will be chocked full of redeeming social value, social, political
and educational as well as acetic.

Which brings us to the second
point.  We are aware that we will be getting a lot of new readers
in the weeks ahead. Why should be change our style for them? Almost
all of them will move on after the convention is over.  Besides,
it is our inimicable style which got us this far, it would be deceptive
and self-defeating to change in an attempt to attract more readers. It
was never about the readers anyway.

The Dowbrigade News has always
been a combination of political commentary and humor, often in the
same postings. We doubt many people come back for the commentary.
When we first started the blog we were asked what we wanted to get
out of it, and without thinking, we answered, "If we can get our
readers to think a little and laugh a little each day, that’s enough."

We will never out-pundit the
pundits. But when someone laughs, a surprising amount of the
time, thinking follows.