Why Reno’s Free Speech Champions Don’t Have Your Back

Read Part I here.

What happens when a victim/villain case isn’t black and white? What happens when the purported ‘victim’ is in fact the villain cloaked in victim’s clothing?

These are questions Reno blogger Ryan Jerz* has had to consider. When the aggressor isn’t the obvious bully at first glance, chances are slim that people will pay close attention. Chances are even more scant that those who do will stand up as they normally would – in obvious deference toward the real victim.

Jerz, unfortunately, found this out the hard way. As he is wont to do, Ryan loves to sleuth examples of, to put it conveniently, doucheyness – when people are doing things that are bizarre, deceptive or misleading. Jerz, though a political conservative, goes after doucheyness at all levels, regardless of who or what it is (we’ve had our noted battles, for example). Examples of his work are here, here and here.

When he somewhat flippantly remarked on his blog, after recently fired University of Nevada, Reno soccer coach Terry Patraw filed a lawsuit against the University, that she would be better to move on, an entire ordeal ensued, which I wrote about here and here. It didn’t end there. Patraw’s harassment continued unabated and aggressively, despite claiming victim status the entire time.

The ensuing drama engendered mostly silence. While a comparison to Genovese is not equitable, the bystander effect idea is. In Jerz’s case, others didn’t publicly speak up after Patraw hired an East Coast attorney. This attorney and Patraw were successful in getting Jerz’s site removed from his longstanding site host (Joyent, whose CEO, David Young, said his company was not willing to stand up for a small client), and after he got another host (Site5) to agree to not back down, Patraw threatened a lawsuit in another state where Jerz didn’t have legal representation. Jerz had no choice but to ultimately cave and remove a substantial amount of content from his site, despite the content clearly being either fact or opinion — constitutionally protected speech in other words.

* Ryan is a good friend and colleague, though he would probably deny it in public.

Read Part III tomorrow.