Texas High Court Backs Weekly Newspaper

[Rose Siding]

AUSTIN, Texas -- A news weekly's fictional article about a 6-year-old girl getting arrested over a book report was recognizable as satire and did not libel two officials involved in a similar real-life case, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.

Under the 8-0 decision, Denton County Court-at-law Judge Darlene Whitten and District Attorney Bruce Isaacks will get nothing in their lawsuit against the Dallas Observer.

The weekly's 1999 article, headlined "Stop the Madness," parodied the judge's decision weeks earlier to jail a 13-year-old student for reading a graphic Halloween story in class. The fictional article was about a girl jailed for a school report on the Maurice Sendak picture book "Where the Wild Things Are."
...
"Any implication of violence in a school situation, even if it was just contained in a first-grader's book report, is reason enough for panic and overreaction," the newspaper had Whitten saying. "It's time for you to grow up, young lady, and it's time for us to stop treating kids like children."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-libel-suit,0,6628789.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[AZCat]

1. Link to original satire...

Stop the Madness

Here are more links about the original case (the 13-year-old):

Schools' solution to violence: silence the weird

Would Stephen King Be Jailed? - hysteria and the social psyche

Weird, to say the least.

Oh yeah - because no post is complete without a picture of at least one of the participants, here is Judge Darlene Whitten:



Homepage


On Edit: added picture of Bruce Isaacks:



Homepage


Note: Please don't email these people, I'm sure they've had enough attention the past few years. I have provided the links for reference (although I'm sure all of you are internet capable enough to find them yourselves)