Rick Casey's Article on Kelly Siegler

Rick Casey wrote an article on Kelly Siegler that has generated some conversation on the blogs. A defense attorney friend of mine pointed it out to me (since I've been trying to avoid reading the news for a week), and his opinion of it was that the article was designed to praise Kelly. One of the commenters on Casey's article thought the article was "kicking Kelly while she was down". And somebody in one of the comments on Bennett's article on the topic pointed out that we were all missing the boat, because the article was clearly satire.

Um, okay.

Me, I viewed the article from a more practical standpoint. It was a complimentary article that Rick Casey buried until after the election so as not to displease his boss, Jeff Cohen by saying something nice about Kelly Siegler. Casey was also writing the article in a weak attempt to make peace with Sam Siegler so that Sam doesn't sue Casey's rear-end.

Casey is the one who reported (without fact checking) that Dr. Siegler had been the sender of the racist e-mails on Chuck Rosenthal's computer, which was NOT true. Now, after Sam and Kelly had been called racists in public thanks to Casey's article, and he learned that it was untrue, he printed a tiny little retraction buried within another edition of the Chronicle, that I'm willing to bet that none of you ever saw.

Casey is trying to do a little bit of sucking up so that his own reputation doesn't get dragged through the mud like Sam Siegler's did.

The difference would be, however, that if Sam decides to file a lawsuit against Casey, it will actually be based on facts that he knows to be true.

If you go back and look at his columns during the election, Rick mysteriously didn't have a whole hell of a lot to say about the Republican race. That's a little out of character for him, wouldn't you agree?

The Reason? He screwed up so big time in his first column on Sam that he was a bit gun-shy for the rest of it.

Now, I know that libel and slander suits are about as popular with juries as trying a 88-year-old with cataracts for possession of marijuana. And yeah, there would be debates over whether or not Sam was a "public figure" and if that changed the standards.

But, by God, it would get some attention, wouldn't it?

Gone Fishing

QUESTION: So what do you get when you're a member of the media with an open records request for Kelly Siegler's e-mails?

ANSWER: Nothing inappropriate.

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: What do you get when you try fishing through Rob Freyer's e-mails?

ANSWER: Nothing inappropriate.

I'm waiting for the media to host a breaking news alert to announce this news. Maybe it can be buried next to the story of Rick Casey admitting he got all his facts wrong when he was blasting Sam Siegler for the e-mails he allegedly sent to Rosenthal.