Time Magazine is a huge player amongst news periodicals.  So what does it want with me, or other blawgers for that matter?  Well, the best I can figure is that the blawgosphere is where the buzz begins, and no matter how huge and credible a magazine may be, anything requiring dead trees in the virtual age requires internet buzz to survive.

For a while now, I’ve been receiving weekly emails from Jen Nedeau, a publicist at Time, trying to get me to write about its column by Adam Cohen, described as “a lawyer, is a  former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial  board.”  He’s also a “Research Scholar in Law, Kauffman Fellow, Information Society Project, and Lecturer in Law” at Yale Law School.  Not too shabby. 

Nonetheless, the publicist is pumping out emails, with advance copies of his column, to wet a mere blawger’s whistle.  No doubt the publicist has been trying to catch the interest of plenty of other blawgers as well, since buzz isn’t built in a single blawg.  I’ve read his columns, and they’re fine.  Dumbed down a bit for the benefit of the public, but well-written, well analyzed and on target. 

The major problem with the columns, from my blawger’s perspective, is that they cover territory that has already been thoroughly covered within the blawgosphere, well after that fact and in far less depth.  What would I write about them, that they are similar to something I wrote a week earlier but more superficial and less pointed? 

More striking to me was that Cohen’s columns had never, but never, quoted or cited to a blawg.  We’re good enough to be used to promote him, but not good enough to be worthy of a mention?  Where’s the love, Adam?  You want something from the blawgosphere but give nothing in return?

So when I received the email from the publicist with his latest column, I replied:

What’s interesting, Jen, is that you send out these releases in the hope that we’ll promote Cohen’s article, which are invariably way behind what we’ve written on the subject, yet Cohen never cites to or quotes from our work.  So we should help promote your client, who has never written a word to show any recognition of the work of those who he would have provide him with free publicity.

You live on a very interesting one-way street.

Just as it’s not my job to help other lawyers promote their carefully crafted internet marketing schemes, I’m not here to create buzz for Time Magazine.  Jen responded by saying that she totally understood where I’m coming from, and that she would pull me from her list of email recipients.  Obviously, the alternative response, that she would let Adam Cohen know that if he wants a little attention from the blawgosphere, he should consider giving a little in return, was not an option.

Had I written this post yesterday, it would likely be close to completion here, with a closing discussion of how the blawgosphere is about give and take, and that Time Magazine’s (and Adam Cohen’s) effort to use blawgers for its own purposes reflects its selfishness and lack of understanding of the blawgosphere.  But not today.

In the interim, Marco Randazza posted about an extraordinary and inflammatory issue that arose via one of my favorite fodder blawgs, Feminist Law Profs.  That’s right, Ann Bartow’s ugly baby that not only finds a misogynist under every rock, but is in the forefront of diminishing free speech by decrying online anonymity, which it defines as a sexist conspiracy to attack women.

It seems that one of Cohen’s columns, criticizing Judge Judith Eiler for behaving poorly (yes, just like this post of mine, except 12 days later), failed to appease someone’s feminist mystique.  Whose mystique, you ask?  Well, that’s hard to say, since the lawprof attacking Cohen chose to remain anonymous.  Anonymous?  An anonymous attack by the very same people who demand that no one be allowed to say anything negative on the internet ever again?  Yup.  Them would be the folks.

And not just an ordinary attack.  Oh no, not just an ordinary attack at all, but a particularly vicious, even outrageous attack, under the title “Memo to Yale Law School Professor Adam Cohen: “What Price Waterhouse did is like saying ‘nigger.’” 

It is time for Professor Cohen to be educated, and I am happy to do it: In the subtle sexism case of Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse, Ann Hopkins was denied partnership at Price Waterhouse because she was not “feminine” enough. She was direct, she was unapologetic, and she had a personality that was more masculine than feminine.

When D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Harry Edwards was trying to explain to the Price Waterhouse lawyers why their client’s sexist discrimination against a woman simply because she was not “feminine” was unlawful, Judge Edwards finally said in frustration:

If someone said “I hate Blacks,” it might be clearer to you, but you seem to suggest that sexual stereotyping is different from race stereotyping. [It is not.] What Price Waterhouse did is like saying “nigger.”

Randazza couldn’t help but note the irony.

Yes, Professor Useless Twat [the name ascribed by Randazza to the anonymous attacker] played the “nigger card.” Mind you, its not that she used the word, as I said last week, but what a card to play in this round of poker! Professor Useless Twat’s point was to accuse Cohen of criticizing Judge Eiler for not being “feminine” enough — as if civility in the courtroom is a “feminine” characteristic. (And somehow the “nigger card” made sense to play there).

Having been a former adjunct and long-time (and outspoken) critic of lawprof orthodoxy, doublespeak, euphemistic attack culture and political correctness, not to mention First Amendment freedom fighter, Marc explains his defense.

And in academia, if he dared to defend himself, Cohen would run the risk of just pushing the barb in deeper. I don’t know Cohen. I might actually hate him if I met him (or I might think he’s the greatest guy ever). I don’t care. I feel compelled to defend him, because it is obvious what Professor Useless Twat is trying to do. I don’t know what her real issue is with Cohen, but there isn’t a shred of honesty in her accusations that his work is gender biased.

Ken at Popehat calls it an “ideology-addled polemic,” which only “academicians and theoreticians can see,” thus using up his weekly quota of polysyllabic words in one shot.

Had you asked me yesterday morning whether I would end a post about Adam Cohen with a defense, I would have laughed.  Ha!  And yet, there’s absolutely no question but that this screed by an anonymous lawprof is absurd¹⁵ (meaning, absurd to the 15th power, not a footnote.  I’m trying to incorporate scientific notation into my writing with greater frequency these days.).  It’s further proof of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, as well as evidence that lawprofs are not immune from the lure of ridiculous anonymous attacks.  It is, without question, nuts.

But none of this alters the fact that Time Magazine, home of Person of the Year, major news source, and Adam Cohen, lawyer, Yale law-something and not a misogynist (at least from what I can see), need to learn a bit about giving as well as receiving.