Politicians Still Need Media Training (The Unfortunate Case of Kirby Delauter)

Kirby Delauter, a councilmember from across the Potomac in Frederick County, Maryland, is about to have his name go down in infamy.  If our next generation of politicians do not want to be Delautered, following a few simple rules may help. [read_more]

Kirby Delauter has turned himself into a laughingstock by threatening to sue a local paper for using his name without permission.  The Frederick News Post responded by publishing a mocking editorial entitled “Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter” explaining the First Amendment through satire and utilizing Kirby Delauter’s name 27 times.

The history

The Frederick News Post, apparently no bastion of conservatism, had published unfavorable articles about Kirby Delauter, a fiscal conservative, in the past election cycle.  In a Facebook message addressed to a reporter for the News Post, Delauter stated:

Use my name again unauthorized and you’ll be paying for an attorney.  Your rights stop where mine start

He apparently later deleted the comment, but not before the Washington Post grabbed a screenshot…

Oh, poor Delauter…

So dear reader, care to take a guess as to whether Delauter has a legal case?  Let’s just say I feel sorry for any attorney he consulted with for Delauter wasting their time.

The mean old Frederick News Post

Delauter’s good friends at the local paper responded on Tuesday January 6 with a mocking editorial containing such gems as:

OK, imagine we agreed because of temporary madness or something funny in the water that week, how would we reference “Kirby Delauter” and do our job as journalists without running afoul of our lack of authorization?…

Blanks? Sure, we sometimes use hyphens in the case of expletives. Perhaps we could do that: “K—- D——-.” Or, perhaps, “Councilman [Unauthorized].”…

Enough. Seriously. What’s Kirby Delauter going to do? Sue everyone who’s making fun of him on Twitter using the #kirbydelauter hashtag, or on Facebook? Boy, his attorney will be able to retire off that…

All Kirby Delauter is doing yet again is displaying his inability to control his temper, embarrassing himself, his district, the county and those who voted him into office. If he wants to govern like a taxpayer, he needs to respect the taxpayers whose money provides his paycheck, stop this silly, inflammatory nonsense, and get to work.

The world piles on

Delauter then became inundated with Tweets with the hashtag #KirbyDelauter representing thousands of individual instances of unauthorized use of his name.  Delauter has made a name for himself very quickly, and this could have been avoided.

Picture courtesy of Scott Pruden.

So what lesson is to be learned?

Contrary to the claims of the Frederick News Post, the liberal media IS out to get conservatives.  In fact, their denial of this, is one more example of how they denigrate and demean conservatives.

…ignorance of what journalism is and does is no joke, and illustrates one disturbing aspect too prevalent in conservatives’ beliefs: That the media are all-liberal stooges hell bent on pursuing some fictional leftwing agenda.

But, this could all be avoided if our politicians followed a few simple rules:

1. Read the Constitution, remember that all of it matters.
2. Don’t threaten to sue people without first seeking the advice of counsel, or at least utilizing common sense.
3. Think before you write.

Follow these simple words of advice and you too may avoid being Delautered.