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From: spp@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Stephen P Pope)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.legal,net.misc
Subject: Re: Autodialing Falwell - a different perspective
Message-ID: <11573@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Mon, 27-Jan-86 20:15:05 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11573
Posted: Mon Jan 27 20:15:05 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jan-86 04:18:57 EST
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Xref: watmath net.religion:9087 net.legal:2814 net.misc:9218

> >Steve Pope should be more careful.  He has (I think) opened himself up to a
> >magnificent lawsuit by falsely claiming that somebody else has committed a
> >crime.  That's called "libel".
> 
> No. Falwell is a public figure, and the standards for concluding libel of a
> public figure are much stricter.

What's more, the statement in question was clearly qualified 
as only an opinion, something that is not very obvious in 
John Wooley's out-of-context quote.
     One would be quite naive to form one's opinion of
Falwell based solely on his public statements taken at
face value!  But I should be a little more careful -- the
level of sarcasm in my comments, while apparent to many, 
seems to have escaped a few.

steve