ANOTHER RESULT OF INTEGRATION MANIA | 2004-07-17
If you don't know what the Sullivan Case was, you need to. Bill O'Reilly was bitching about it the other day. O'Reilly is upset that anyone can defame and lie about and even destroy a public figure without being sued.
The Supreme Court said that anybody could defame and destroy any public figure in a case called The New York Times versus Sullivan, 1962. Sullivan was a segregationist official in Birmingham Alabama, and under the law as it stood then, as it had always stood, Sullivan had the New York Times dead to rights. The New York Times had lied about him and he had been hurt so badly that he could have collected huge damages.
But the one thing liberals were not going to do, whatever the cost, was to stop any liberal media from saying anything that would damage a segregationist. Sullivan has the New York Times dead to rights under the law, so the law had to be changed.
In order to protect the right of the New York Times to make up any story it wanted to against any segregationist, the Supreme Court had to make it simply impossible for any public figure to win any suit against anything the media did. So that is what the Supreme did.
As Lenin said, "If you want to make an omelet you have to break some eggs." So in the Sullivan Case, the Supreme Court broke a lot of eggs.
Sure the Supreme Court ignored the Constitution in the Sullivan Case. But the last person on earth who has a right to object to that is the integrationist fanatic Bill O'Reilly. He has repeatedly said that the Founding Fathers wanted the government to sponsor interracial dances because they called this country "The UNITED States of America." He repeats that endlessly.
Compared to that craziness the Sullivan Case represents a strict constructionist reading of the Constitution.
The Sullivan Case was just twisted. O'Reilly's idea that the Founding Fathers insisted on interracial dances is actually insane.