View from the North 40: Vaguely legal news briefs

A federal appeals court in Michigan gave unanimous support Wednesday to your First Amendment rights to communicate clearly with your middle finger.

The Associated Press reports that in 2017, Taylor, Michigan, police officer Matthew Minard pulled over Debra Cruise-Gulyas and gave her a ticket for a minor offense. After the stop was over Cruise-Gulyas flipped off Minard, who then stopped her again and gave her a ticket for a more serious speeding offense.

Cruise-Gulyas sued, saying her free-speech rights and her rights against unreasonable seizure were violated, and the court ruled the officer “should have known better” than to let a little bird flying get to him.

Readers are cautioned that this First Amendment ruling is guaranteed valid only in Michigan and may be only in the testing phase in some states.

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Weird News reports that a hipster has unwittingly proved the point made in a technology publication that all hipsters look alike — because he did not possess enough wit to wittingly disprove the point.

MIT Technology Review, a tech publication affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, printed the article “The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same,” Feb 28.

An unidentified man sent an email claiming that they used his photo in the main graphic for the article, saying he was “pursuing legal action” for the Review’s “lack of basic journalistic ethics” for reporting “uncredited nonsense” and “slanderous, unnecessary use of my picture without permission.”

Gideon Lichfield, the Review’s editor-in-chief, said, basically, “Hey, just because the guy doesn’t like being called a hipster doesn’t mean it’s slander, but we’ll look into the matter.”

The publication prides itself in being a leading scholarly information source, so Lichfield launched an investigation of the photo in question. The folks who created the graphic for the article, said, “No, boss, we had licensed permission.”

So the Review contacted Getty, the stock image source, who said, “It’s all kosher and, oh, by the way, we checked the model contract for that image, and the name on it is not the name of the guy who is complaining.”

When Lichfield wrote the guy to tell him he was not the guy in the photo, the guy replied, “Oh, I guess you’re right, it’s not.” Period. Paragraph. End of story and the lawsuit.

Lichfield, though, should reward that hipster with a year’s subscription to the Review or at least a fancy coffee for providing ultimate, real-life proof of the theory — and for all the free PR.

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Finally, I would like to close on a personal note.

Much has been reported about the 50 people involved in the university admissions scandal, and while the world is busy expressing outrage and disdain for everyone involved, I am asking my readers to find compassion in their hearts for the just barely adult children who are being persecuted for their parents’ actions.

Because their parents will be spending considerable money on their own legal defense, these normally privileged students will likely not be financed in the manner to which they have grown up accustomed.

I am looking into starting a non-profit organization to help them.

Parents of college-age students will be able to donate their own children’s scholarships and the money from their own second mortgage to help pay for the affluent kids’ tuition, therapy and party expenses, including bar, concert and sports tickets; yacht rental; and suitably haute couture clothing (aka “high fashion” in fancy terms).

Plus, I am looking into finding some sort of corporate sponsorship to provide matching funds in situations where a parent donates the money they saved by sending their kid to a cheaper school because their kid’s spot in the big league was taken by an over-indulged, and possibly lazy and dumb, kid.

I urge you to help support these under-deserving wealthy students — who likely won’t make it on their own — by donating to the Save Our Wealthy Scholars Education Assistance Re-apportionment fund, or SOWS EAR, where our working motto is: “You can help this SOWS EAR save privileged young adults destined to pull the proverbial silk purse strings, whether they’re qualified or not.”

It’s a work in progress.

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I’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, you can send your thoughts and prayers via me at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.com/.