Couple who Fled Home after Spike Lee Tweet Hires Law Firm UPDATE: Spike Apologizes
A couple who say they were forced to leave their home after director Spike Lee re-tweeted their address to his Twitter followers has hired the Morgan & Morgan law firm to represent them.
“At this point, they have retained us to protect their interests” and their safety, attorney Matt Morgan said of Elaine and David McClain, an elderly Sanford-area couple in their 70s.
The couple’s address was tweeted by a man who believed he had uncovered the address of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month.
The problem is, the address does not belong to Zimmerman, but to the McClains, who have a son named William George Zimmerman who lived there in 1995 and still lives in Central Florida.
He is no relation to George Zimmerman, 28, who killed Trayvon on Feb. 26, sparking national outrage and international interest. Zimmerman has claimed self defense and has not been arrested.
After Lee’s retweet, the couple’s other son says, the McClains have been forced to flee their home and live in a hotel given the rapidly spreading threats of violence against the real Zimmerman.
Which dovetails with a post that Ace wrote earlier today, in language that likely wouldn’t be approved by the keepers of the bland institutional tones of the Orlando Sentinel:
If I were a c***s*cker, and advising that elderly couple that non-filmmaker Spike Lee endangered, I’d tell them to incur some costs.
Because you can’t have a lawsuit without costs. For one thing, you have to be able to show the costs you incurred due to your tortfeasor’s actions.
For another thing, it’s going to be hard to sell a claim of emotional duress if you just chillax at home. Like, you claim you feared for your life, but then you sit home and watch Matlock, same as before.
So if I were a real c***s*cker, advising these folks — I’m sorry, that’s offensive, I meant Person of C***s*cking — I would tell them “Go to a hotel and keep the receipt.”
Ace also links to a post by film/commercial maker Ladd Ehlinger Jr. on Lee. Ehlinger writes, “Lee once made movies about the dangers of the mob mentality.” Though based on interviews he did to promote Do The Right Thing, he seemed to advocate a violent mob when it suited his purposes; he would be far from the first the first on the left to do so. In case, as Ehlinger writes in 2012, Lee, “in a fit of pique,” seeks to drive that mob “and innocent people are having their lives ruined:”
These are the tactics of a bully that can’t shoot straight.
Twitter has seen fit to do nothing about this, even though this is a clear violation of its Terms of Service. The person who originally posted the erroneous information and got Spike Lee to retweet it, @maccapone, is also still on Twitter.
In case you missed it, here is the relevant Twitter rule:
You may not publish or post other people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.
Someone should let Twitter know that Spike Lee and Marcus Higgins have been breaking their rules.
Rules are rules, Twitter. That one in particular has some wisdom to it. The question is, will you enforce it, despite Spike Lee’s fame, fortune, and connections to President Obama, or will you be an instrument of terror in the world? How many innocent bystanders will be forced to flee their homes and fear for their lives because of your corporate cowardice?
Or does Twitter condone this type of thuggery?
Ehlinger’s post is titled, “He’s Got to Have It.” And based on the article above from the Orlando Sentinel, he just may, in a court of law.
Meanwhile, Jim Treacher, responding to the plight of the McClains, the septuagenarian Florida teachers whose lives have been upended via Spike and other celebrity rabble-rousers adds:
Hey, if these two didn’t want to be intimidated and terrorized by an angry movie director and his online followers, they should’ve thought about that before they moved into the house where, 10 years later, somebody would think Zimmerman lived.
If you’re against vigilantes taking matters into their own hands, except when it comes to dealing with George Zimmerman, #YouMightBeALiberal.
I notice Spike hasn’t been working much lately. I hope he’s been saving his money. Lawyers can be expensive.
P.S. Of course, we shouldn’t rush to judgment on this until we know which one of Obama’s parents the McClains more closely resemble.
Actually, while Spike once declared that while the calendar would eventually be measured as “B.B.: Before Barack and A.B.: After Barack,” based on this early 1990s quote, repeated today on the Popehat blog, he would be much less circumspect had he ever met Mr. Obama’s parents:
I don’t recall exactly when I concluded that Spike Lee is an asshole, but I think it was around the time he told Esquire “I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.” I’ve long viewed hostility to interracial couples a reliable tell for self-involved douchebaggery, and now that I have a multiracial family my impression is only confirmed.
The Esquire quote is referenced in this 1993 L.A. Times article, which adds another charming statement by Lee:
“Black South Africans are gonna have to kill people. . . . That Gandhian (stuff) don’t work. They gotta start picking up guns. . . . I went to South Africa. I saw those little kids chanting, ‘One bullet, one settler.’ It’s gonna come to that. I’ll be rejoicing. Who knows? We might see the same tactic here some day.”
–Spike Lee, insights gleaned shooting “Malcolm X” (Esquire, Oct.).
Yesterday, Victor Davis Hanson wrote:
So far all that is clear is that there is a growing anger among African-Americans about a failure to immediately arrest the shooter that in turn is provoking an even greater backlash against the antics of Al Sharpton, the creepy bounty offered by the New Black Panther Party, and others who inflame for their own careerist advantage, and no one — not the president, not the media, not the civil rights leadership, not the politicians — seems willing or able to call for a time-out until all the facts are reviewed and released. We have collectively regressed to the days of Rodney King and the L.A. riots and the O. J. Simpson trial — or to something far worse. Hope and change came and went.
Arguably, Tinseltown has merely been standing still, having gone from the racism of D.W. Griffith to the racialism of Spike Lee in less than a century. For a big picture town, sometimes you sure need a microscope to measure cinematic progress.
Related: “MSNBC Dowdifies George Zimmerman to Make Him Sound Racist.”
Update (7:00 PM PDT): Amazing what the prospect of a lawsuit can do to focus the mind:
Or as Jonah Goldberg tweets in response, “Shorter @SpikeLee I meant to direct death threats and intimidation to someone else’s house. My bad.”
More: The Twitter Hall of Shame notes, “Lee just apologized for his retweet…But he still has not deleted the tweet with the McClains’ address” — and it is indeed still up as 0f 7:40 PM Pacific tonight. (Address redacted for obvious reasons):
And speaking of Twitter, as Dan Riehl writes at Big Journalism, a “Kill Zimmerman” account has been created, and as of the time of this post, also remains online, also in violation of Twitter’s rules.
Exit question: “Civility: Will Obama Return $1.6 Million Raised by Spike Lee?”
(Bumped to top.)
It’s almost as if the Demarxists need a race riot. Recreate ’68!
The contraceptive thing wasn’t working out for them, so they took a random incident and are trying to make it the new cause celebe’ because the Left can’t run on their record. $4/$5 gallon gas is going to kill them, but look, racism!
It may be just coincidence, but the New York Knicks have been a combination of thuggish, selfish and just plain unlovable in the 20 or so years since Spike made himself the team’s unofficial mascot. In other words, he’s fit in perfectly with the team, whose fortunes on the court during that time have also mirrored Mr. Lee’s box office success numbers, plunging to new lows since the new millennium.
Lee has falls into the camp of the “have no shame” famous, somewhere between Donald Trump and the Kardashians, in that normal missteps that embarrass or humiliate normal people are just brushed off, because the media loves the person for their outrageousness, even if nobody else shares the same opinion (I’m eagerly awaiting Spike’s next effort to Uzi a race card into his own foot via Twitter, probably via some nasty crack about the religiosity of point guard/Tim Tebow cohort Jeremy Lin, once it becomes acceptable to start blaming him for any Knicks losses).
Now is the time where we juxtapose:
1917 — Kaiser Wilhelm tries to forment war on America by stirring up Hispanics with the Zimmermann Telegram.
2012 — Spike Lee tries to forment war on America by stirring up trouble against a Hispanic with the Zimmerman Tweet.
Film career, meet fail. Pretty terrible country when a black multi-millionaire can’t call for white people to be murdered or beaten without someone complaining. The biggest laugh is that you can’t find black folks who’ll leave this terrible country to go live in a black one and that black folks in black countries are lining up at US consulates to come to racist America. Well, what’s a little racism when you can actually use it to make a million. Maybe I should go to Nigeria and start making movies about what jerks black Nigerians are. But I don’t think they have that political correctness thing yet.
I think “Spike” would be a national hero in South Africa nowadays.
creeps like the Knick’s little poodle — here Spike, that’s a good fella, roll over! — and the New Black Panther Party wanted-dead-or-alive lynch mob, and now the hooded-Black-Panther-now-Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush, come out from under and show themselves off as the nasty homicidal maniacs they are .
Speaking of thugs, check out Higgins’ Twitter handle: @maccapone.
With what do we associate the word “Capone”? Respect for the law? Hardly.
“I’m sorry” just doesn’t cut it.
I hope the couples lawyer makes spike buy the a nice new house somewhere better !!
I am not a lawyer, but it was *not* a mistake, their Spike. It was negligence, negligence arising during the commission of a malicious act. As far as I’m concerned, you are a accessory to the death threats if those making the threats obtained the information from your tweet.
For that matter, Twitter is an accessory also.
We are not abandoning the rule of law because the usual suspects of the never-to-be-pleased parts of black America demand something they consider “justice”–but that others might not.
The usual apologies for my usual spelling/grammar errors.
I just want to be blunt and clear–there is something bigger than black America, and it is that bright, shining city on a hill that is the ideal of a self-governing, rule of law based, constitutional Republic where each is treated as an individual equal in the eyes of the law, and not as a member of a group whose privileges depend on economic class or racial status. And I want to emphasize that “rule of law” part.
At some point, I don’t care what sins were committed in the past. We are not sacrificing that above ideal because a group feels it is appropriate “justice”, and that is all there is too it. Whites cannot do lynch mob actions, and neither can Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, and MSNBC.
And because my dander is up–Let the dam come loose:
We are not sacrificing that ideal just because the Martin family cannot accept the fact that Trayvon *probably* threw the first punch.
We are not sacrificng that ideal just because the Democratic party wants to provide (basically) free health care to the poor and the rest of society has not been convinced.
We are not sacrificing that ideal because Islamic fascists see the chance for the Caliphate to come back and folks at home are more interested in getting back at Chrstians for the abuses of the past.
We are not sacrifcing that ideal because some parts of society can’t advance, as long as the reason they cannot do so is not legal in origin.
We are not sacrificing that ideal because the South as a corporate whole did something it should not have and the rest of the post-Civil War nation acquiesced.
We are not sacrificing that ideal just because the old nations of Europe imperially colonized everything under the sun just because they could and some thus don’t like Western culture at all.
We are not sacrificing that ideal because some are demanding financial equality for all now when it can only be had at the cost of functionally impovershing all.
We are not sacrificing that ideal because Mexico cannot put in place a culture or system that can comfortably provide for its people, so some think it is our duty to so insure.
We are not sacrificing that ideal for *anything*. Period. And that is all there is to it. This is going to be that bright shining city upon the hill, or it is going to be nothing.
Spike Lee needs to be an example for all who would follow his example.
Sandra Fluke did not accept Rush’s apology, and leftists pressured his advertisers and station managers until many sponsors left, and (one or more) stations dropped his show.
Don’t accept Lee’s apology. From a legal standpoint their lives are negatively altered, going forward into a now dangerous, threatening future.
Sue him for present and future pain and suffering engendered from the possibility that some Skittled and furious Trayvon hoodied vigilante, who didn’t get the memo, shows up on their doorstep with a gun, a knife, or a can of gasoline and a match.
Ed – Your description of Spike Lee makes him to be a despicable individual. His influence on the black community cannot be good for that community.
BTW – If Twitter allowed this to be posted in violation of their own rules, doesn’t that make them liable as well? And I would think their pockets are a lot deeper than Lee’s.
I hope the McClains sue Spike’s shiny ass.
Get as much as they can out of him.
This entire affair has been very illuminating. It turns out many things we thought were not to be done in high-profile crime cases in fact can and should be done. I’m not sure I agree with the new standards, but the major media outlets and our elites are usually right, so I guess I will conform. I also know they believe in color-blind justice, so that these new standards are to be universal, so, as a thought experiment, here are:
“Things I learned are now acceptable if a black, Hispanic, or Muslim man is accused of raping and murdering a beautiful young white woman who originally agreed to the sex ( some friends think she was too drunk or high to have done so, though another person at the party saw her on top of him), and who commited suicide later that night, for unknown reasons, while he was still in the house, but before anyone else saw her:”
1. It is now acceptable, if the police do not press charges, to start online petitions demanding this black, Hispanic, or foreign/Muslim rapist/murderer be brought to justice.
2. It is now acceptable to highlight the race of the individual if a subset of that group has a history of bad behaviour that can be related to the crime, and would help the public understand the true nature of the rapist/murderer better.
3. It is now acceptable to use the most angelic photos of the girl that can be found, so as to sway public opinion.
4. It is now acceptable to use the photo of the non-white man that puts him in the worst light, so as to sway public opinion.
5. It is now acceptable to have demonstrations in the street demanding the man be charged.
6. It is now acceptable to publish the address of the man of color rapist/murderer, with the hope that someone kills him.
7. It is now acceptable to push for votes of no-confidence in police officials who have said the man doesn’t appear guilty and thus should not be charged.
8. It is now acceptable for the white President of the United States to say the murdered rape victim could have been his white daughter.
9. It is now acceptable for public figures to say that the white community cannot accept the rape of white girls by persons
of color.
10. It is now acceptable for the Klu Klux Klan to put a bounty on the head of the rapist/murderer.
11. It is now acceptable for members of the state congressional delegation to demand to be kept in the loop on when this despicable rapist is going to be charged, and why no action was taken, and how to prevent such incidents of non-immediate punishment from happening again.
12. It is now acceptable to publish the street addresses of friends and families, so that they “get the message”.
13. It is now acceptable to demonize anyone who points out the white girl had a habit of sleeping with men at parties and had tried to commit suicide three times before.
14. It is now acceptable to kick the person of color out of his school immediately, so that he does not endanger others if those righteously seeking justice come looking for him.
15. It is now acceptable for national organizations such as Twitter to aid vigilantes, as a way to encourage the police to stop kicking the can and just arrest the darkie so we can get the show trial over with and the killer executed, because everybody knows he’s guilty as hell.
Like I said–I’m not entirely sure I really like these new standards, but I guess they have to be uniform across the board, because I know members of Congress, the President, Al Sharpton, and the MSM do not have anti-white biases, and are thus acting the way they are acting because they feel this is the way everyone should always act in cases like these, lest injustice rule. So I guess I will get on board.
I guess everything old *is* new again. Pity.
One I forgot::
15. It is now acceptable to edit the accused’s remarks so that he matches the stereotype.
16. It is now acceptable, if it looks like the push for the needed prosecution of this no-good rapist beast is stalling, to gin up more outrage by having the news present to the public all the witnesses but the one who most exonerates him. This will prevent him from slinking back into a good life if for some justice is perverted. Of course, the menfolk will take care of that issue, just after the next White Panther meeting. Know any good hanging trees?
17. It is now acceptable, if the deceased had a Facebook or other social media tag (“SuicidalSlutandlovingit!”) that would tend to cause doubt about her victimhood status, to not report to or recap for the public this fact to the maximum extent possible.
18. It is now acceptable, if the attacker was of mixed race, to be sure to drive home the fact that if he is exonerated it will be because it turns out he wasn’t one of those bad races, who could never have been innocent of the crime accused of, because that is just who they are and what they do. Thus, headlines like “Man’s identity blurs racial motive: X’s lineage make dynamics difficult to sort out” are recommended.
Because it would be obvious to all what the motive and guilt would be if he was just “black”.
18.5 in other words, it is now acceptable to always posit that there can only be racial factors at work, and that what happened can largely be determined by the racial makeups of those involved.
19. It is now acceptable, if there is some sort of electronic evidence (cell-phone records, Internet usage, etc) that could be looked at to lend credence to the murderer ‘s side of the story, to not aggresively investigate them and if they are looked at, to not really highlight them in mass media outlets.
Because we all know that blacks just really like their booty calls and want to screw white women. Go look at their gangsta rap videos. They’ll tell you themselves. How much longer do we have to wait for justice?
Ya’ll just don’t understand. We can’t have a colorblind, post-racial society where every one is treated with respect unless we can firebomb a white boy’s house when he has it coming. Peace.
Here is something else that I have sadly learned about this affair–if you are white, and especially if you in any way can be tied to the GOP–then you are an absolute fool to risk living in a mixed-race community, because any time a judgment call has to be made between disputants, you will be considered automatically racist and guilty.
The message I am getting from this affair is that it is far better to just move away, as a risk management decision. Don’t invest there, don’t live there, don’t build there. Because you stand a good enough chance of not being given a fair shake in a dispute , even if you have a good case to make–and a good enough chance of being given a mortal blow, career wise–that the risk may not be worth it.
That’s the message I think every white businessman not wedded to the Progressive cause should take from this affair, especially if he is Southern. When push comes to shove, in a serious dispute (contractural, etc.), you might be demonized by the MSM-types, so you might want to think whether the risk of being involved in or living in those communities is worth the exposure to disaster.
That’s the unintended message of this entire thing. Because George Zimmerman has been hung out to dry on a stereotype. A stereotype. He in fact may be guilty of manslaughter. But that is not what the evidence available right now says, and until further evidence comes forward–if any such evidence exists, which it might not, because the man just may plain *not* be guilty, something that is being treated as inconcievable–the main reason so many are willing to hang him high right now is because of a stereotype.
About white Americans, and white Southerners in particular. And it is not that such things as Zimmerman might have done did not once happen, and often, for they did–but that it is automatically assumed that is must have been impossible for Southern men to turn away from that path, and that is how they are now.
Except they did, and they aren’t.
This entire thing is a national witch hunt. Not that I’m most likely going to be able to act on it in any way but as a consumer of news information, but as for myself I do not ever intend to have anything to do with the New York Times, CNN, ABC, or NBC (MSNBC goes without saying), because they have some sins of the past and present they need to address, and are refusing to do so, and a lot of good people get demonized because of it. Personally, I hope each and everyone of them goes out of business, as a lesson to the future. A pox upon their house.
Except I’m a Southern white guy, so my opinion has no weight. Even though Martin Luther King was already dead and buried by the time I was born. But I will tell you this–there is no reason for me to aid those who have made it clear that, when push comes to shove, I should expect nothing but a mob-mentality in return if I ever decide to do something they decide they don’t like.
And it would logically follow that I have no reason to aid, build, or support the larger society if I think that is what is going to be allowed–indeed encouraged–by it. Why would I? Why should I? Wouldn’t it seem far better to live a quiet, reasonably comfortable life than try to make something bigger than all of us, because there are some groups that simply act as if they do not think there *is* or could be anything bigger than themselves and will do their best to destroy anyone who thinks otherwise– and that others are too cowardly to stop them?
Yes. It would. Much better. So demonize my demographic all you want. The left seems to have no desire to wear an albatross for its sins of the present and immediate past, including communism, which still lives on in Cuba. Why the hell should I for the sins of a more distant one, sins that were largely committed before I was born? No. A pox upon your house.
I really have never thought of myself as a Southern white male first and foremost. Until really today, thinking on this issue. The feeling will pass, I suppose, and I’ll feel more as a mainstream American in a few hours. But a critical inflection point has been reached in my heart, that will grow unless other folks start standing up. Because from what I can see from this affair, if I was ever in a similar situation, the usual suspects would apparently allow me to be nothing but a “racist white Southerner”, and the rest of society would let them. I wouldn’t be able to claim to be a Hispanic, or a registered Democrat, or have black folks in my family who could vouch for my nature. No, I would just be a white Southern male descendant of Northern Europeans who registered as a Republican once, so I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding prosecution or demonization, ten years of honorable military service as an officer to the contrary.
Therfore, my feeling right now is that speaking of hell, to hell with all of you not from the South. Because you would just throw me to the wolves anyway if a similar situation happened. So why in the world should I care about you?