I have never before heard of Greg Frankson. Apparently, he’s a Canadian poet. I have never attended any of his poetry readings. I don’t know him personally, and I don’t know anything about his life or behavior other than that he writes poetry.
Oh, except for one other thing.
He’s received a lifetime ban from a number of Canadian poetry events that I’ve never attended nor planned on attending (nothing personal, I’m sure they’re lovely occasions) for reasons of harassment and sexual assault. This was preceded and accompanied by the usual amount of soul-searching and anxiety in the communities involved. All I see is that a bunch of organizations familiar with Frankson saw the evidence, reviewed it with the sense of dread that this kind of attention usually brings, and in the end, universally condemned Frankson and delivered the only kind of punishment such groups can bring: expulsion.
The only reason I know about this, and in fact know more about the sordid behavior than I do Frankson’s poetry, is that Frankson is suing the woman who spoke out about his actions, as well as a slate of poetry organizations that took action to protect attendees at their events. He’s demanding something north of $300,000 for damages and loss of income (who knew poetry paid so well?)
Well, helloooo Barbra Streisand! What are you doing in this neighborhood?
Classic dudebro technique. I’m hopeful he won’t win.
But I just noticed something from that first link:
Wut…
And it’s a link too. Looks like somebody messed with their page. Is PoetryGate about to start?
I just made up a poem!
–Ode to Greg Frankson–
I’ll leave your poems on the shelf,
So you can just go read them yourself
Doesn’t scan so well. Maybe someone can fix that for me.
I touched her tit
She called me a twit
Now I’m suing
Because of it.
:) :(
To echo this chamber:
Of course he needs lawyers, cuz they are infringing his freeze peach. They won’t let him talk so they are censoring his free speech. Everybody gots to listen to him with no criticism whatsoever and his lawyer is there to back him up. freeze peach freeze peach!!
[done playacting now]
Throwing lawyers is only good if they stick. If they fall off it’s not as much fun.
That’s why you’re supposed to roll them in hot tar before you fling them. YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE LEGAL SYSTEM!
I feel sorry for the lawyer, having to work for a guy like that.
And good for the community, I hope they get all the support that they need!
Anyone know if the wikipedia page is correct on Candian defamation law?
Lawyers, prostitutes, and proctologists; everyone loves to make fun of them, until you really need one.
@congaboy:
Best not to get the business cards mixed up though.
Your honor, I wasn’t harassing her. All I said was that I once knew a girl from Nantucket.
You mean there’s more than 1 Canadian poet? I bet he isn’t as good as Robert Service!
Will I get sued now?
A classic for winter time.
congaboy, here ya go:
Q: what do you call a bus, full of lawyers, running off a cliff?
A: A good start. *smirk*
Rich Woods @ 10:
Good call.
Twas Brillig @ 13:
You call that a good start; I call it a good wrongful death law suit–clearly the bus company was incredibly negligent and I’m sure that cliff wasn’t properly marked.
I stopped telling lawyer jokes the first time I realized that for every asshat weasel in a cheap suit, either defending a vile cretin or attempting to press a lawsuit that was purely vindictive, there was another one on the other side fighting the good fight and trying to achieve something that would actually resemble justice.
Can we use a trebuchet?
Guess who’ll represent Ruthanne and Rusty? A lawyer!
Fuck off with bad jokes, you’re embarrassing yourselves.
Also, seconding freemage.
To add to the comments about the good lawyers. I recently was involved in a wage theft class action suit against a former employer (we won – yay). The attorney who handled our case was a really great guy. You’d never guess he was a lawyer if all you had to go by was the looks of his office. He’s clearly not in this for the prestige and $$$$.
Well, let’s just remember that he was never convicted in a court of law, therefore we must abstain from judging Frankson ourselves. If there was wrongdoing, then there would be charges, right? Meanwhile, PZ is a great big poopyhead and is guilty of libeling Greg Frankson. I know this because it’s totally rational and abstaining from judgment in this instance is totes different than abstaining in the first. Just take my word for it. I’m a skeptical poet.
Yup, what freemage said @15.
Standing with freemage. Lawyer jokes aren’t really any less unpleasant than Polish jokes, or gay jokes. Those are people, and you’re laughing at the idea of their dying in numbers.
…do attorneys actually have an obligation to accept a given civil case in Canada?
I think lawyer jokes are closer to “white people” jokes than either of those, frankly.
rq @7:
The lawyer can always say no.
Ogvorbis
Sure, they can – but someone needs to do the job, and it’s not always going to be the person who most wants to do it.
All I’m saying is that, being who I am, I wouldn’t want to be in the lawyer’s position.
If the lawyer is as much of an asshole as Mr Poet, I’m sure they’ll get along swimmingly. In which case my feeling-sorry-for is probably wasted. But oh well, it’s my feeling-sorry-for to waste.
Azkyroth @24
Still not okay to joke about them dying in large numbers, or dying at all, or being murdered, just for being lawyers. :P
Also, I hope Frankson loses his suit, because the poet community
deserveshas the right to be harassment-free, too.Actually, no: while everyone should be entitled to a criminal defense, a person seeking to prosecute a civil suit – especially one that’s facially frivolous, like this one – has no reason to be entitled to representation. Frankly, if the culture and professional standards of the legal field were such that people who are trying to use the legal system as a weapon of offense could expect to not find accomplices among the profession, most of the humor in “lawyer jokes” would evaporate.
But it is with certain other privileged groups, apparently….
@Azkyroth #29
Are people entitled to a civil defense?
@Suido #30: Do you mean are people entitled to government-funded legal representation in civil cases? My understanding of Canadian law is no, they’re not, except in very limited circumstances (some child custody cases, for instance).
As far as whether there’s an obligation for an attorney to take a case as long as the potential client can pay, I don’t see anything that would indicate that such an obligation exists in the Code of Professional Conduct for Canadian attorneys. It certainly doesn’t work like that in the U.S., where I practice, and it seems to me that such a rule would be untenable anywhere.
FYI, the current Barristers and Solicitors oath:
http://www.lsuc.on.ca/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=9720
My understanding of the oath is that we are obliged to take on any reasonably founded case, unless the nature of the case or of the client is so repugnant to us that we believe we could not perform our job well.
This was done, according to my jurisprudence professor, because lawyers have pretty much a monopoly and therefore should not turn away a case lightly. That would keep people from access to the system. I was taught that if a client had a case that I felt was based on a correct legal argument (even if it was a weak argument) and I was not in a conflict of interest position (say, had acted for the other side at some point) then I had to take the case.
There are some nuances I haven’t covered, but generally, if I were capable of handling the case, then I had to take it on.
while waiting in a line in a stair well a group of people past us one man had a big button pinned to his coat which said “I smell shit must be a lawyer around”. I saw it and laughed. The women behind him said as she past and he’s a lawyer.
uncle frogy
There are clever jokes at some group’s expense, and then there’s just mean pseudo-jokes. People dying or smelling like excrement are in the latter category. Ask yourself: could the target potentially laugh along with you?
I learned most of my best lawyer jokes from a lawyer. He had quite the repertoire.
What’s black & brown & looks good on a lawyer?
A Rottweiler.
Why do lawyers wear neckties?
To keep their foreskins from rolling up and suffocating them.
I, too, learned the ‘best’ lawyer jokes from lawyers.
But, I, too, will stop using them.
(even though lawyer jokes are almost all punching up)
(even though lawyer jokes are almost all punching up)
No, they’re just ‘not punching down’. And they’re particularly fucking stupid coming from people who rely on lawyers, and legal organizations, to do things like prevent fundamentalists from kicking down the wall between church and state. Or, on the macro level, to defend people who are being harassed by douchebags trying to use the courts as a weapon.
Yes, yes, we know, all lawyers must be men. I always love a little sexism on top of the lawyer-bashing.
*flails arms at self*
I meant to address the gendered nature of the joke in my 38, though I admit, my first reading yielded up the implication that all lawyers are men. Apologies, it’s almost noon and nearly naptime. :P
I wasn’t trusted in a crowd
so wandered lonely as a cloud
IIRC Lewis Thomas talked about the days before antibiotics when doctors couldn’t actually cure anyone of anything. There was also no health insurance. You only called the doctor in desperate circumstances so doctors were associated with much unpleasantness and as a consequence there were some very nasty doctor jokes, pretty much the same ones now told about lawyers who, of course, you only call in cases of much unpleasantness.
Lawyer jokes are like Jewish jokes – best told by the people themselves.
Despite my deepest green and red (in the European sense) convictions, I have to say that some of the nicest, kindest people I’ve met in the course of my work as an interpreter have been lawyers, cops, and prison officers.
On the other hand, some of the biggest shits I’ve ever met have been (according to themselves) liberal, progressive, tolerant types.
#35/38/39 – not only sexist, but rather antisemitic as well, which I find odd given that law is one of the stereotypical Jewish professions
@theobromine #43
I’m not seeing the antisemitic connection in the joke.
Grewgills #44 – no foreskin to hold back with the tie?
Greg, son of Frank
(Frank in name
not demeanour)
sidewinds out of scrutiny
behind a human shield
bellowing “Assassin!”
But in that case lawyer jokes wouldn’t be limited to the US. Lawyer jokes, and advertisements for lawyers, are limited to the US; and frivolous lawsuits are much rarer elsewhere.
Over here, lawyers just… never come up in conversation.