As IF Times

Source: Jury selection begins in Erin Andrews $75 million lawsuit against Marriott | syracuse.com

Although stupid lawsuits are as common as insults during a Trump family dinner, when it’s worth 75 million dollars and involves an attractive female ‘personality’ it’s still news. The defendants in this peeping Tom case are not only the perp, but also the Marriott hotel chain which supposedly aided and abetted the creep in allowing him to film Erin in the expected privacy of her room.

You won’t find anyone taking the side of the creep who should get whatever punishment he deserves based on existing laws.  Without the benefit of a procedural legal system, the best solution would be for Erin’s brothers or friends to take this guy out in the back alley and sh0w him some manners.  No lawyers, no judges and possibly no repeat crime.

But the Marriot company is also drawn into this as a co-defendant and likely the only party that will have to pony up $75 million in the case of a court loss.  This is preposterous. It creates a wildly asymmetric cost/benefit profile for the hotel.  Imagine that for the price of a 200 or 300 or even a 500 dollar room, the hotel is expected to provide complete and absolute security for the entire duration of the customer’s stay.  It implies that the customer can never be harmed by virtue  of putting down a few hundred bucks per night.  If that were the case, the FBI witness protection program may as well contract out to hotels.

If in fact there is the expectation that absolute privacy and safety must be ensured by the hotel, a few hundred bucks per night isn’t going to pay the cost of such security.  They may have to reassess their business model and add a few digits to all room rates in order to prepare for the lawsuit contingency. You may need mortgage brokers in the lobbies of these places. Only in the west and the U.S. in particular,  are people so delusional that they think their ‘hurts’ have a legal price tag attached to them.  Every visit to a business including hotels,  grocery stores, yoga studio, movie theaters or fast food outlets which  results in real or imagined harm would have the potential to be  lotto ticket winners.

In Erin Andrew’s case, we wonder how they arrived at the $75 million dollar damages number.  If the point was to teach Marriot a lesson, why not claim $200 million and really teach them a lesson?  I suspect that the hotel can argue that sexism is at play here, because if it were Terry Bradshaw being the victim, he’d be lucky to be offered a room upgrade on his next visit.

Source: How, this time, Trump may actually have gone too far (+video) – CSMonitor.com

So this time, according to the article, Donald Trump may have gone too far…he’s crossed the rubicon.  Hmm.  Many will recall when Trump first announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination earlier this summer.  His stated advantage was that since he was more than financially secure, he was not beholden to anyone or any group’s influence.  This meant that he could say what he wanted without fear of antagonizing financial backers or satisfying the established status quo.

He proved that over the ensuing few months by insulting a broad spectrum of people starting with illegal immigrants from Latin America, notably Mexico which set off the Hispanic community.  He also cast the Chinese as, while being clever, also evil in their trade policies.  He crassly insulted Megyn Kelly when she posed a question to him after a debate.  He called Carly Fiorina not attractive.  He insulted a known war hero, John McCain and of course he calls out politicians  for being stupid and incompetent…and those are the ones on his side.   Oddly only his barber has been left unscathed by his biting remarks.

So in summary, he’s notionally offended Hispanics the world over, a few billion Chinese, all women, soldiers and most politicians, left and right.  But now, he’s insulted Muslims! Now the media gets mobilized with outrage to condemn him??  Therefore, while he’s heretofore ‘offended’ well over 80% of the world’s population up to now, it’s only when Muslims appear to be slighted that everyone gets all college student in their indignation.

Only now that the Muslim community is called out do we observe nations threatening to ban Trump from entry; his name being removed from commercial projects; his castigation as a first class racist and a cad to boot.   I think that if anything, this tells the other constituency of insulted groups that they have no pull.  Their PR machinery has nowhere near the kind of influence that Muslims do in protecting their brand.  While The Donald is certainly no slouch when it comes to media manipulation, apparently, neither are the Muslims.

Yet, none of this has really affected Trump’s appeal to his supporters, who presumably come from all sectors of the offended groups. If anything, he seems to grow in approval.  The appeal is not in the man.  It’s in his unvarnished attack on the crippling mentality of political correctness which has infected society at every level.  Whether you like him or not, ironically, Trump is the guy standing up for free speech…and free speech is about freedom to say what’s unpopular, not the ability to get Facebook likes.

UPDATE:  As if to prove Trump’s point, other nations are telling Americans how to behave: Saudi Prince weighs in