On Kirby Delauter and his so-called rights

Until the past couple of days, I'd never heard of Kirby Delauter.

He's a local politician in my home state of Maryland. Specifically, he's a member of the Frederick County Council.

So what did he do to become so famous (or infamous, as the case may be)?

He threatened to sue The Frederick News-Post for using his name without permission.

"Use my name again unauthorized and you'll be paying for an attorney," Delauter wrote in a Facebook post directed at a News-Post reporter As if any news outlet needs permission to use the name of public figures when they do public figure things.

I won't bore you all with a detailed deconstruction of just how idiotic this makes Delauter look. The News-Post does a nice job of that in an editorial with a brilliant piece of trolling thrown in for good measure.

I encourage you all to read the editorial itself, which I included in the link above. If you'd rather not, each first letter of the editorial spells out Delauter's name.

I won't be a copycat and do that here, but I was tempted. Boy was I tempted.

Besides the First Amendment discussion the News-Post and other outlets were so quick to trumpet as giving media the right to use his name, there's another element that makes Delauter's threat laughable. Namely, in the context of Frederick County, Maryland, he's a public figure. If someone were to write something or say something disparaging about Delauter in Montana, he might have a case because he's not a public figure there.

But this isn't about Montana or Dubuque, Iowa or Portland, Maine. This is about Maryland. This is about Frederick County, where he is a public figure, or at least a limited purpose public figure. As such, Delauter would have to prove there was actual malice on the part of the newspaper in printing his name.

Granted, the editorial might be used as evidence of such malice because of its expert trolling job. But I doubt it. It likely would be considered an act of public commentary. It would be considered part of a newspaper doing its job by being a public watchdog over those who are supposed to represent us or to pass laws to protect us.

Regardless of public figure or First Amendment issues involved, the act of threatening a newspaper with a lawsuit because they used his name simply fails the smell test. It's an attempt to intimidate the news media from doing its watchdog duty.

I hope Delauter has plenty of money if he wants to go ahead with suing the News-Post or anyone else who has suddenly decided to use his name. Now that he's made a fool of himself, he may now be a national public figure, which would make his case even more spurious than it already was.

Nice going, Kirby Delauter.