![]() What’s his beef with Gawker? In 2007, Gawker’s Valleywag blog posted a piece entitled “ Peter Thiel Is Totally Gay, Guys” - and, though he wasn’t the only one whose personal life was aired on the Gawker site, that made it personal. (Fun fact: he’s pledged support as a San Francisco delegate for Donald Trump.) Thiel, who was an early investor in Facebook and was played in The Social Network by Wallace Langham, an actor best known for crotchety procedural CSI, has the money to keep this going for a while, with Forbes estimating his current worth at approximately $2.7 billion - which makes the $10 million he dispensed in Hogan’s case look like relative peanuts. Confirming Denton’s suspicions, PayPal founder and Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel came forward as Hogan’s benefactor Wednesday, a move that sparked a swirl of conversation about ethics and expensive litigation and the lengths billionaires will go to for a grudge. Who is Peter Thiel? What was once a whispered rumor of an anonymous backer financing Hogan’s case has, over the past two days, turned wholly concrete. Gawker appealed for a new trial but a Florida judge denied the appeal, which brings us to today, when Denton is said to be pondering whether to sell the business in order to keep it afloat. He sued, and earlier this March, a Florida court issued a verdict in his favor, awarding him a whopping $140 million in damages. The Basics In 2012, Gawker, the gossip site, published an excerpt of a sex tape putatively belonging to one Terry Bollea, alias Hogan. ![]() You can already count this one among the marquee scandals of the year. As the bitter litigation drags on, Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton is said to be exploring a sale, and according to the Financial Times, one of the potential bidders is the owner of trade Women’s Wear Daily. And suddenly, it came knocking down fashion’s doors. Despite its powerful players, it seemed like a brouhaha that was taking place far far away from the world of fashion, over there in the nerdy lands of media and tech. I simply think he’s an asshole for doing it, and a coward for having attempted to do it in secret.It’s the legal battle that has taken over your Twitter feed: the face-off between pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media, which has now transmogrified into the clash between billionaire Peter Thiel and Gawker Media. I, for one, don’t dispute Peter Thiel’s right to back Hogan’s case. Willick’s defense of Thiel strikes me as being of a piece with the view that the super rich are an aggrieved, rather than privileged, class. And now commentators who are appalled are free to express their outrage at Thiel, perhaps embarrassing him and making it less likely that he or others of similar super-wealth will do this in the future. But Gawker founder Nick Denton was free to air his suspicion that Hogan had a billionaire Silicon Valley backer, and Forbes was free to out Thiel as said backer. Thiel was free to secretly back (and apparently strategically steer) Hogan’s case against Gawker. Gawker-sympathizers hand-wave about how the wealthy contrarian is Not and should not be in dispute, no matter how much And that means Peter Thiel’s right to back Hogan’s cause is Regardless of where they reside on the left-wing privilege totem Our First Amendment protects the speech rights of everyone, My counter to Willick, though, is that it’s possible to be outraged and/or alarmed by Thiel’s behavior without proposing any sort of new legislative barrier to prevent this sort of thing.įortunately, this debate does not needs to be resolved, because Willick’s argument is that Thiel’s bankrolling of Hogan’s case against Gawker is within the bounds of free speech. Worried about the superrich harassing critics with genuinelyįrivolous lawsuits - as, yes, authoritarian characters likeĭonald Trump have attempted to do - they would have more successīacking tort reform measures to limit litigiousness overall thanĪttacking Thiel for contributing to a legitimate cause he has good Would also represent a far greater threat to free expression thanĪ court-imposed legal liability for the non-consensual publication Put the ACLU and any number of advocacy groups out of business. Put caps on the amount of money peopleĬan contribute to legal efforts they sympathize with? That would It’s also not clear what policy response Gawker’s outragedĭefenders would recommend. Jason Willick, writing for The American Interest in defense of Peter Thiel: ![]() ![]() Peter Thiel, Gawker, and Freedom of Speech Wednesday, ![]()
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