Hey, there! Log in / Register

Circumcision-hating Jewish guy who simulated sex with a blow-up doll while naked on stage loses libel suit against Harvard student newspaper

A federal judge yesterday dismissed Eric Clopper's libel suit against the Harvard Crimson over the way it covered the controversy surrounding his one-day performance at Sanders Theatre over the evils of circumcision.

US District Court Judge Richard Stearns ruling came about three weeks after he dismissed Clopper's suit against Harvard for firing him after the 2018 performance.

In his suit against the Crimson, Clopper alleged the paper libeled him three ways, by calling him antisemitic, by saying he worked on the performance when he should have been doing his job as a Harvard IT worker and that he "engaged in a 'nude, anti-Semitic rant' " during his performance.

Stearns ruled none of the allegations were "actionable."

He said that Clopper himself acknowledged in his lawsuit that he worked on setting up the performance during his scheduled Harvard work time and that he was, in fact, nude on stage for at least part of the performance. The judge noted that while the Crimson noted his work-time performance work, it not question its propriety.

Although Clopper may not have actually "ranted" while nude - he didn't speak, just danced with a sex doll he called Britney while a Britney Spears song played in the background - Stearns said, maybe, but libel law allows such possible mistakes if the overall context of the article in question is correct.

[H]ere, the context of the referenced headline indisputably dispels any defamatory interpretation. The first line of the article, after all, explicitly clarifies that "Harvard is 'reviewing' reports that University employee Eric Clopper made anti-Semitic comments and stripped to the nude during a public performance he gave in Sanders Theatre." ... The article also includes several quotations from plaintiff describing his nude performance as the conclusion or "about the last 20 seconds" of his play.

As for Clopper being antisemitic - which he said was impossible, being Jewish himself, so therefore the Crimson libeled him - Stearns wrote that's a matter of opinion and opinion is protected by the First Amendment.

Stearns added that Clopper's claim the Crimson violated his civil rights also fails because he did not show the Crimson used " threats, intimidation, or coercion" to deprive him of any rights, as required under Massachusetts civil-rights law.

Neighborhoods: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon Complete ruling63.93 KB


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Makes sense. I mean, what could they have possibly said that was untrue which would have the effect of harming his reputation further than the things that are true?

up
Voting closed 0

He definitely ain't right in the head.

up
Voting closed 1

Who actually attends a performance like this? The original article states he received "a standing ovation from hundreds of progressive Harvard audience members." Figures. I mean, I know "everybody's a critic", but this isn't even good performance art.

up
Voting closed 1

my college days, like the time Lyndon Larouche came to campus to give a political speech. A few of my classmates dressed up in elaborate clown costumes, sat in the front row, and roared, whistled, cheered and clapped for everything he said. It made me very proud to be a student there.

Before my time, but I saw photos of the time Reagan came to campus, having just previously given a speech in which he'd claimed that trees cause more air pollution than automobiles. Students had draped the trees behind his podium with signs that said, "Stop me before I kill again."

up
Voting closed 0

This is the weirdest shit you have ever posted.

up
Voting closed 1

The ebay stalkers are way weirder and that was only a few months ago.

up
Voting closed 0

One by one (sometimes two by two), the participants in that have been pleading guilty. Next up is the sentencing, which will be in a few months.

up
Voting closed 0

I see the seeds of an excellent Agatha Christie-type murder mystery, one of those ones where a variety of strangers are thrown together on a country estate or an island or a train. We'll start out with this guy, the ebay plotters, and Shiva Ayyadurai, and take it from there. Who gets to be the victim? The Mystery of the Universal Hub. It has great promise.

It will all climax in a Storrowing, of course.

up
Voting closed 0

Is moving on its own on account of a lazy MBTA driver jamming the phone in the throttle control.

up
Voting closed 0

it's "Panic on the Red Line."

up
Voting closed 0

Dougie Bennett gets elected governor as well

up
Voting closed 0

Adam, please don't stop.

up
Voting closed 0

Never Stop Never Stopping, Dewd

up
Voting closed 0

he needs to cut it short?

up
Voting closed 0

n/t

up
Voting closed 0

We all need some levity right now.

Keeping things light and bris helps us a city and country come together and hopefully we can find others who will meatus somewhere in the middle and possibly make some frenums in the process.

up
Voting closed 1

I'm all about the bris puns, but I don't understand "keeping things light and bris". Is it supposed to sound like "light and bright"?

up
Voting closed 0

Are coming to a bris-k conclusion.

up
Voting closed 0

For tips, but this guy...

up
Voting closed 0

rightness of head is relative. we are the ones who cut skin off the genitals of our own children.

up
Voting closed 0

So it's ok to cut parts off a baby's genitals (as long as it's a male baby that is), but not protest about it? Got it.

Three national medical organizations (Iceland, Sweden and Germany) have called for elective infant male circumcision to be banned, and two others (Denmark and the Netherlands) have said they'd support a ban if they didn't think it would drive the practice underground.

"Routine" circumcision is banned in public hospitals in Australia (almost all the men responsible for this policy will be circumcised themselves, as the male circumcision rate in Australia in 1950 was about 90%).

If it weren't a religious thing, elective circumcision of boys would have been banned in lots of countries decades ago, same as it was for girls.

up
Voting closed 0

This wasn't a referendum on male circumcision.

up
Voting closed 0

It wasn't even throwing dollar bills at the audience while complaining about Jews (and screw it, Jews can too be antisemites, why, I wrote about one just last month).

It was the part about him getting naked and having sex with a blow-up doll on stage after the theater specifically told him not to - in advance. There's more about that in this story, which is linked in the story above, but whatevs.

up
Voting closed 0

Circumcision, including of infants, is recognised as vitally important for combating the HIV epidemic in Africa, and maybe in some places outside of Africa. As long as it is to a high medical standard there is no justification for a ban, and those European (particularly Nordic) bodies that oppose it do so on ideological and cultural grounds, not medical ones. It is telling that of the three western medical bodies that have attempted an evidence-based appraisal, two (the AAP and CDC) came out in favour (albeit stopping short of saying it should be routine) and the other (the Canadian Pediatric Soc.) considered it "closely balanced".

up
Voting closed 0

He only takes tips.

up
Voting closed 0

So he sees all these watches and clocks in a storefront window, figures he can get his watch fixed there and walks in, only to have the guy inside say sorry, he's a mohel.

"So why do you have watches in your window?"

"So, nu, tell me what I should display there?"

up
Voting closed 0

the wallet made of foreskins that when you rubbed it turned into a suitcase. (The secretaries on his salesman circuit loved him, the old rogue.)

up
Voting closed 0