Mattel once sued over the ‘Barbie Girl’ song — before learning to love it; The Washington Post, June 23, 2023

  Jennifer Hassan, The Washington Post; Mattel once sued over the ‘Barbie Girl’ song — before learning to love it

"“Mattel lost all those cases and got the message,” Tushnet said. “These were important precedents protecting commentary at a time when the internet was just allowing people to reach larger audiences without traditional gatekeepers. Then the ‘Barbie Girl’ case confirmed that traditional, commercial media also had the freedom to parody and comment on well-known trademarks.”"

The Outrage Over Kevin Williamson; New York Times, March 30, 2018

Bret Stephens, New York Times; The Outrage Over Kevin Williamson

"Shouldn’t great prose and independent judgment count for something? Not according to your critics. We live in the age of guilt by pull-quote, abetted by a combination of lazy journalism, gullible readership, missing context, and technologies that make our every ill-considered utterance instantly accessible and utterly indelible. I jumped at your abortion comment, but for heaven’s sake, it was a tweet. When you write a whole book on the need to execute the tens of millions of American women who’ve had abortions, then I’ll worry...

The real question, then, isn’t what kinds of arguments are “acceptable.” It’s what kinds are, or ought to be, acceptable to liberals. In The Huffington Post, one writer proposes that the answer is none. This is the liberalism of the 9- year-old sticking fingers in his ears and saying: nah-nah-nah-nah-nah. Anyone still wondering how Donald Trump became president need look no further.

The wiser test of acceptability is whether an argument is thoughtful, thought-provoking and offered in good faith. That holds true even if the views aren’t politically representative. Last I checked, you and I were hired as columnists, not party ideologues or demographic segments."

The Blog That Disappeared; New York Times, 7/29/16

Roxane Gay, New York Times; The Blog That Disappeared:

"On June 27, Mr. Cooper’s Google account was deactivated, he has said. He lost 14 years of his blog archives, creative work, email and contacts. He has hired a lawyer and made complaints, and many of his readers and fans have tried to support his efforts. There is a petition circulating, urging Google to restore his work. Pen America, an organization that promotes free expression, has weighed in, saying that Mr. Cooper deserves a substantive response from Google.

Thus far, these efforts have been in vain. Google has not responded beyond saying there was a violation of the Terms of Service agreement. It has neither identified the specific violation nor indicated why it also deleted Mr. Cooper’s email account. It has not provided Mr. Cooper with the ability to download his personal information so he might rebuild his blog and email account elsewhere. In one interview, Mr. Cooper said he thought that the male escort ads might have led to his account’s being deactivated, but this has not been confirmed by the company.

When I contacted Google for further comment, I got a response that said, “We are aware of this matter, but the specific Terms of Service violations are ones we cannot discuss further due to legal considerations.” I asked about why Mr. Cooper’s Gmail account was also deleted and whether or not he would be able to retrieve the archive of his work, and I was directed to Google’s Terms of Service, Gmail Policy and Blogger Content Policy, which did not offer any useful specifics."