April 2nd, 2010

I’ve Been Punked! (By My Own Joke)


Yesterday I was on the lookout for someone trying to get me back after posting that I was to be named the White House law blogger.

Maybe a friend posing as a journalist? As someone from the White House? Didn’t happen.

But they got me today.

The New York State Trial Lawyers Association — which advocates for civil justice issues and which I’ve been a member of for years — sent this blast email to its membership:

Dear Colleagues,

I am proud to report to our entire NYSTLA membership that our very own NYSTLA member Eric Turkewitz has been hand-picked from on high to be the official White House Legal Blogger.

I can think of no better spokesperson for the Rule of Law as well as the Civil Justice System. Eric has proven himself to be a person of true character and integrity who has seen first hand the pernicious assaults against our clients’ rights and understands the seriousness by which we must respond.

I am also excited to give a little Law Day preview, as Chief Judge Lippman has just agreed to personally acknowledge Eric on Law Day with a presentation recognizing this honor. Also, it is my understanding that The New York Law Journal is planning to write about this news on Monday.

I would like wish all my colleagues a safe and rewarding holiday week and weekend. Enjoy the sunny weather promised for our state these next few days. And on Monday, let’s come back well-rested and ready to take up the cause once again.

Congratulations once more to Eric Turkewitz.

And Eric – does this mean NYSTLA members get free White House Tours?

Warm Regards,

Richard S. Binko
President

The distribution list is in the thousands.

Then an email came in from a friend asking if I’d seen it. Yep, I had. And I confess to getting that warm, fuzzy gotcha feeling of having punked someone else, pretty big time, though I wasn’t looking forward to the new deluge of email I would get.

Turns out, there were only two recipients of that email. Me and my buddy.

Well played, my friends, well played.

 

April 2nd, 2010

About That White House Blogger Post from Yesterday….(NYT Gets Punked)


Welcome to April 2nd. And that means a deconstruction of what happened on April Fool’s Day when I announced that I was going to become the official White House law blogger.

The basic idea was this: A bunch of law bloggers would try to punk the political bloggers, whose reputation is to grab any old rumor and run with it. Fact checking hasn’t always been the strong suit of this community.

But the political bloggers, to their collective credit, didn’t bite, despite wide dissemination of the story. Not on the right or the left. Instead it was the vaunted New York Times that ran with the story without bothering to check its facts. The Times, of course, had no sense of humor about it when the angry phone call came to me a couple of hours later.

Here’s how it played out: Knowing that the premise of me getting such a gig was, shall we say, a tad far-fetched, I enlisted some heavy-duty muscle to give it credibility. Without others watching my back, I knew the ruse wouldn’t get off the ground.

This was the plan:

I post at 6 a.m. with an understated announcement.

At 9 am Above the Law uses its megaphone by putting it in the Morning Docket. Those that come to read my post will likely think it’s an April Fool’s gag.

Patrick @ Popehat (who last year pranked the world by creating the North Korean Twitter Feed) follows at 9:30 with a rip-snorting, barn-burning denunciation of my appointment, filled with speculation and innuendo trying to feed red meat to the political right. It would be a parody of a political attack, if it were still possible to parody such attacks anymore. (see: I Guess John Edwards Wasn’t Available) Patrick also has a source inside the Senate Judiciary Committee to give the appointment credence, albeit an anonymous one.

Scott Greenfield @ Simple Justice pitches in on petty political problems within the office of the White House Press Secretary. Those problems arise since I won’t be answerable to this department, but only to the White House Counsel. The Press Secretary is mad about that. (see: Turkewitz: Honest Broker or Loose Cannon?) Now, if the WH denies the story, I have a good reason. His source inside the press office was anonymous.

And Orin Kerr @ The Volokh Conspiracy comes in to say that his source inside the White House counsel’s office is also pissed. (see: How Did the White House Pick Its Law Blogger?) This source is mad because I posted before it was official. I’m a loose cannon. And yes, his source is anonymous.

The underlying idea was to give people second thoughts about the story’s legitimacy, because practicing lawyers would never set themselves up to be skewered like this and have their Google reputations trashed for years to come. (Hey guys, can you, ahem, edit those stories now?)

So, I have the ATL megaphone followed by three reputable bloggers confirming my appointment with three anonymous sources on a day everyone is looking out for pranks. Would anyone be taken?

Just to be sure, I tried to put some mustard and relish on the hot dog:

Doug Mataconis @ Below the Beltway pitched in with complaints about my appointment from the perspective of opposition to the health care bill. (see: Medical Malpractice Attorney Appointed White House Law Blogger)

And Walter Olson @ Overlawyered was on tap to likewise pan my selection, if he was able to get to a computer (he Twittered it).

Now let’s ask again: Would anyone be taken by this motley consortium of co-conspirators?

Silly question. Of course someone would. Who needs bona fide confirmations in the digital age when speed is more important that accuracy? Everyone wants to beat everyone else to the headline. And the illogic of someone setting himself up for a digital thrashing provided cover for the preposterous nature of the whole endeavor.

While I may have certain skills as a trial lawyer, none of them prepare me for a position in the office of the White House counsel expounding on constitutional law issues I haven’t dealt with before.

The comments came in via email and blog comments, on Facebook and on Twitter. I felt bad for my friends that were taken in. But only a little bit. My friends know how to laugh. And so do my digital friend co-conspirators.

But the political blogosphere, as I mentioned earlier, never bit.

Perhaps one reason (aside from it being a silly endeavor), is people love to expose a ruse, making it more difficult to pull off on such a high-profile day. Even before I made it to the office, the ABA Journal had very strongly hinted at a stunt. Their post is time-stamped 6:46 AM CDT. Ouch. They even gave a run-down of my a prior April Fools hoax I ran regarding fantasy baseball and judicial recusals. It was almost like they were waiting for me.

By 1 pm, Ashby Jones at the WSJ Law Blog was emailing me, trying to get me to ‘fess up. Seems he had called the White House for confirmation. (See: White House Hires Personal Injury Lawyer to Launch New Blog.) He conceded “we were had” and was, to be sure, a terrific sport about it when he tried again (this time by phone) to pry the secret out of me. The White House, he said, claimed it was an April Fool’s joke. The WH was apparently ready for this because, by 9 a.m., I already had hits from the service provider “executive office of the president usa” as well as the “us department of justice.”

But the New York Times didn’t bother to fact check. Not with me. Not with the White House. And not with Google, which already had the stories from both the ABAJournal and the WSJ by the time they ran the story at 2:05. The Paper of Record blogged in it’s City Room this piece on When Lawyers Blog:

…After all, as Mr. Turkewitz, a Manhattan lawyer, writes on his New York Personal Injury Law Blog, he is about to be sounding off on all manner of legal issues as the Obama administration’s new White House law blogger.

“Excited about new blogging gig as White House law blogger,” he tweeted this morning. “But hope I don’t have to spend too much time in D.C.”

Spoken like a true New Yorker.

At 4:45, I received a phone call from an infuriated “Andy Newman” from the New York Times demanding to know if this was an April Fool’s joke. Unlike the classy Ashby Jones, Newman had zero sense of humor and demanded that I answer “as an officer of the court” or he would pull the post down.

I tried not to laugh, and told him that due to concerns in the White House about me jumping the gun on the story (as per Orin Kerr’s post @ Volokh), I really shouldn’t say anything and would clear it up tomorrow. This clearly wasn’t good enough for him as he hung up on me, and down came the NYT post. The Times, I guess, doesn’t like being punked on April Fool’s Day.

Next time, perhaps, they will fact check April 1st stories involving small-time law bloggers suddenly becoming White House law bloggers. Next time.

The Times then updated its piece with this editorial comment:

[Note: an earlier version of this column had an item about a blog post by a personal-injury lawyer, Eric Turkewitz, announcing that he had been appointed the White House law blogger. Blogospheric chatter indicates a high likelihood that this post was an April Fool hoax. Mr. Turkewitz declined to give us a straight answer on this score, so, pending callback from the White House, we’ve taken the item down.]

As of 6:30 a.m. on April 2nd, the new comment about a a “pending callback from the White House” is still up, so maybe The Times is losing its muscle in the White House. Hopefully, my new best buddies in Washington weren’t too upset about getting the press inquiries.

So where did the idea come from? It came from my screenwriting brother Dan, who has no shortage of story ideas, and who was recently in the news because of the letter Justice Scalia wrote him regarding secession. He was also the one that stuck my head on the body of former Senator George Mitchell for my photo op with President Obama (compare to picture at top).

Incredibly, one commenter at the Volokh Conspiracy actually knew this was a picture of Mitchell. How? There must be a million photo op pictures like this. Which leads me to believe that Sen. Mitchell himself or his wife/kids/friends/staff must be reading and commenting. (The same comment was left on my site, which I declined to publish so the gag wasn’t too quickly exposed.) So let me give a big shout-out to the Mitchell family, and thank them for tolerating my comments about George’s posture.

My wife, by the way, hated the head shot that was photoshopped on to Mitchell’s body, since she said it made me look 20 years older than I am. So for Mrs. NYPILB (she loves that acronym), I’m putting up another that was taken the same day.

Now one final question: Why the hell would I go to all this trouble for an April Fool’s stunt?

I’m glad you asked: Lawyers often deal with misery. Peoples’ lives can be forever changed in a fraction of a second in an accident. Divorce. Child custody. Bankruptcy. Arrests. There is no real end to the chain of human misery that clients bring to the doors of practicing attorneys.

So the April Fool’s post is a count-your-blessings kind of thing. You only live once and life doesn’t come with rehearsals. If you can enjoy yourself a little without hurting someone else, then that’s OK. Laughter isn’t the antidote to all of life’s ills, but it sure doesn’t hurt. Unless, of course, you’re the Paper of Record.

Victory Lap Update:

Numerous additional links to the gag are at this welcome post for new readers.

Update: April Fool’s Day 2011: The NYT got taken again (Scott Greenfield @ Simple Justice)

 

April 1st, 2010

White House Denies I’ve Been Given Blogger Role (But Not True)

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt denied today that I’ve been given the job of official White House law blogger, according to the WSJ when reporter Ashby Jones called for confirmation.

Politics can be a funny thing. As noted earlier today at Simple Justice, a source inside the Press Secretary’s office had already said that they were irritated that I would be working for the office of the WH counsel and not be answerable to the press office. Scott Greenfield wrote:

I’ve heard from an old pal inside the White House press secretary’s office that they are none too pleased by the newest member of the administration. They are scared to death that they now have a loose information cannon on their hands after reading his body of work.

So I guess I’m not surprised that the press office gave that comment to the WSJ. Before I even start, they are already trying to squeeze me out.

As noted earlier, Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy has also confirmed my appointment with his own sources.

And, The New York Times has likewise succeeded in confirming the appointment. In today’s City Room Blog, they wrote in When Lawyers Blog:

After all, as Mr. Turkewitz, a Manhattan lawyer, writes on his New York Personal Injury Law Blog, he is about to be sounding off on all manner of legal issues as the Obama administration’s new White House law blogger.

“Excited about new blogging gig as White House law blogger,” he tweeted this morning. “But hope I don’t have to spend too much time in D.C.”

Spoken like a true New Yorker.

So, to my friends that were concerned I’ve lost the gig, rest assured that I will be showing up for work shortly at the White House. Except, of course, for those times I’m able to telecommute from New York. And yes, I will expect LaBolt to buy me a beer as payback for talking out of school in his too-quick, and uninformed, response to the WSJ.

 

April 1st, 2010

Counterfeit Drugs on NYT Op-Ed Page

One of my old cases is on the op-ed page of today’s New York Times, dealing with 16 year old Timothy Fagan who had an emergency liver transplant and was then injected with counterfeit Epogen. Those drugs had followed a tortured route that included storage in a cooler in the back of a Florida strip club.

You can read the op-ed here: Are You Buying Illegal Drugs?
The piece is authored by Katherine Eban, who wrote the book Dangerous Doses that had profiled how this 2002 incident had occurred.
Tim Fagan’s Law, introduced by Rep. Steve Israel and designed to better safeguard our drug distribution system, is still pending.
You can get more background on the problems with counterfeits at the counterfeit drugs tag for this blog or at the counterfeit drug resource page at my website.

 

April 1st, 2010

On Becoming the White House Law Blogger (Updated x3)


Since word is already dribbling out among my friends, I thought I should let you know here: I’m closing down this blog in the next few weeks to start up a new one at the White House as their official law blogger. I’ll have the opportunity to both expand the scope of my writing and serve my country at the same time. As blogging gigs go, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Here’s the back story, since most people assumed the job would go to one of the professors that were in the running instead of a practicing attorney. I first came to the attention of President Obama and Democratic Party officials last year with my posts regarding Sonia Sotomayor. I had plucked from her official questionnaire to the Senate the information about her having a private practice as a solo practitioner, and noted that the name Sotomayor & Associates was misleading as to the size of the firm for a solo. The Washington Times picked it up in an editorial and eventually the New York Times ran with it (without attribution to me, I might add) and the White House was forced to put out a defense of her conduct. All of this lead a Senate staffer to call me regarding the issue.

While people inside the administration told me they weren’t too keen on the story I was telling, they at least appreciated the fact that I was writing fairly on the subject — given that I made sure to note that while this was an ethical transgression it was nonetheless minor. So some saw me back then as an honest broker who, perhaps, might be able to reach people that weren’t necessarily on the same page politically as this administration.




And White House readers returned again (as did some from the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court) for the letter from Justice Scalia to my brother on the issue of secession. In particular, they liked my analysis on how secession could (in theory) come before the court, not because anyone thought it would actually happen, but because this little personal injury blogger from New York had no problem coming up with a theory where Justice Scalia fell short.

You can see a track of these high profile visits to my blog to the left.

All of this came to the attention of new White Counsel Bob Bauer — recently profiled in the Washington Post — who told me when we spoke that he hoped to see the new law WH law blog have greater involvement in getting the message out to people regarding pending legislation and its relationship to SCOTUS opinions of the past. In particular, this had to do with simplifying the message for complex issues, which was the very essence of this blog when I started.

There was, and I hope I’m not talking out of school on this, some disappointment in the way the health care legislation was handled at the top level regarding the failure to make sufficient preemptive strikes on constitutional challenges that arose from various politicians disgruntled at having lost.

Bauer also told me that during the vetting his office did, they particularly liked my analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision in Philip Morris v. Williams as well my thoughts in the judicial recusal issues raised in CBC Distribution. For reasons that still escape me, he actually liked what he saw and asked if I would consider coming aboard.

But he also noted that my posts regarding the torture-endorsing John Yoo , or the mockery of democracy that took place with Bush v. Gore, might rankle a few people from the other side of the aisle, and that this job might not be for the squeamish. In other words, while they liked my writing style, they knew that my presence in the administration might raise an issue or two and that the fit, while good, wasn’t perfect.

My appointment, which I hope will become final in the next few days, will clearly toss me into the political fray as I venture a bit more into political issues, an unavoidable circumstance given the nature of the position. Whether I am ready for prime time or not after 3+ years of blogging remains to be seen, and I fervently hope that I don’t step on the wrong toes.

Obama-Turkewitz-31910-762000With the job comes two perks. First was the 30 second meeting with Obama during the interview process and the photo that you see here that I’ll stick on my wall. (And yes, Mrs. NYPILB has already given me grief about sitting with my legs like that.)

But there is actually one thing more important, that I know every blogger would love: I get an intern that will proof-read my stuff before it goes live. Regular blog readers know that, because blogging is usually a sideline instead of a career, rushed content often results in errors (though I’m happy to see the President has the same problem). My intern will also help me sift through the avalanche of email the position will no doubt generate.

To the political bloggers that have already started to send me stories: Please stop. My gig hasn’t started yet and I’m already being swamped. That which is relevant today may have no relevance in two-three weeks time, and I’m also going to have to port much of this stuff to a new account that will be subject to federal record-keeping rules. Logistics can be a pain and I don’t have help yet, so please bear with me.

As to the name of the new blog, the leading candidate is White House Law Blog, which is very descriptive but I think a bit of a yawner. It’s also too similar to the existing White House Blog. Mine will have a different angle as I’ll be confining myself to legal issues.

In addition, I’ve already tried using a descriptive name with this blog — a subject about which I have very mixed feelings — and am hoping for something a bit more creative. (I had dumped a descriptive name for Twitter by using @Turkewitz.) If you have thoughts on a good name for the new blog, you can leave them in the comments and I’ll bat them around with the new bosses.
—————————–
Update: Apparently my appointment has set off a big problem inside the office of the WH Press Secretary since I won’t answer directly to him: Turkewitz: Honest Broker or Loose Cannon?

And I just got my first taste of a right-wing hit job: I Guess John Edwards Wasn’t Available (this post is coded “nofollow” so that it doesn’t get link juice)

And people inside the beltway are already questioning the wisdom of a hiring a medical malpractice attorney as law blogger, calling it “an incredibly stupid idea”: Medical Malpractice Attorney Named White House “Law Blogger”

Update #2: I know some are concerned because the news happens to fall on the first of April. But Orin Kerr @ Volokh has also first-hand confirmed the appointment: How Did the White House Pick Its Law Blogger?

Update #3: