Parker attacks free speech (fixed)
DOGHEAD
I hate to return Robert Parker's name to a subject line in this newsgroup.
I extend my apologies to all. This is a matter of some interest, in many
respects. A letter I received by hand recently at my place of employment -
a prominent NY wine retailer - bears witness to Parker's thin-skinnedness
and inability to endure criticism in a fashion that surpasses all his
previous megalomaniacal thrashings.
Some of you may have seen my somewhat inflammatory post on the new edition
of Parker's Rhone book. In it I reported on reading set of tasting notes
on Grand Tinel Chateauneuf-du-Pape - my reasons for picking that estate
being that their most recent release (at that point, the 1994 - 1995 should
be in soon) is the product of a new cellar regimen (including the use of
new wood in the aging of the wine) and that this has been a fairly reliable
value-pick of Parker's over the years. Simply, I wanted to see whether he
had caught the change; this is the sort of spot-check I often do with new
volumes of tasting notes.
Of course, he hadn't caught the change. He goes so far as to say in his
note on the 1994 the wine is always more or less the same - very reliable,
full, blah-blah fruit, peanuts ... the stuff he usually says about Grand
Tinel. I don't have the text in front of me, but give it a look if you
have it handy. The question then was, in this post, how can that be?
Could it be that he did what so many salespeople do with new vintages of
reliable wines - that he extrapolated from past experience and knowledge of
the vintage conditions? Who knows? One has to ask the question. Maybe -
this came up in a follow-up post - he tasted the wine quickly in a big
syndicate tasting and just missed it? Either way, how can that happen?
How can a basic character change be missed by one of the Rhone's great
experts?
This isn't so important, in the greater scheme of things. My view,
captured by the rhetorical question with which I finished the initial post,
is that Parker sometimes seems to be on autopilot - that he tastes too much
and sometimes not attentively enough and that we wind up getting Parker's
general views sometimes in place of specific ones. So what? He misses
something like this now and then, but that's to be expected when a critic
takes it as his mission to publish more tasting notes than anyone else.
Not taking this too seriously and having gone through the possibilities (I
take it to be POSSIBLE the guy didn't taste that wine, just as I take it to
be POSSIBLE that he did and still wrote a rote tasting note based on past
experience) at length with Foster and Squires and having purposely -
knowing Parker - framed the thing in terms of asking readers to come to
their own conclusions about the issue, imagine my surprise when a messenger
showed up at my store from Simon & Schuster. My manager was informed that
this messenger bears a letter from Robert Parker's attorney, Emily Remes,
Senior Counsel at Simon & Schuster. It reads in its entirety as follows:
>
>
Simon & Schuster is the publisher of Robert M. Parker's books about
wines. Your recent posting on Alt.Food.Wine concerning Mr. Parker has come
to our attention. In that posting, you report on your purported "test" of
the wine ratings by Mr. Parker for the above work and state that "the point
is to check to see whether there is actual tasting being reported on in the
book, or whether completeness is being feigned." You note that your
"confidence was shaken..." and clearly intend the reader to conclude that
"Mr. Parker has published tasting notes on untasted wines in the context of
giving an overview of an estate."
We have discussed your posting with Mr. Parker and share his outrage at
your false assertion that Mr. Parker offers tasting notes on wines
including the 1994 Grand Tinel/Chateauneauf-du Pape that he has in fact
not tasted. Mr. Parker's tremendous success as a wine critic derives from
his ability to offer honest, meaningful, independent and uncensored
evaluations of wines based on tasting them. Your statements to the
contrary are false and defamatory, and are damaging to Mr. Parker in his
profession and reflect unfavorably on his books, all of which we publish.
On behalf of Simon & Schuster and Mr. Parker, we demand that you take
the following initial steps: immediately delete the posting in question and
post a retraction, and identify to us in writing any other instance where
you have made the same or similar assertions. Please confirm your
compliance with the foregoing immediately.
Mr. Parker and Simon & Schuster will consider such further action as
they deem appropriate. This letter is not a full statement of our claims
or our rights and remedies, all of which are expressly reserved.
>
>
Permit me to note that I was both quoted out of context and misquoted (the
final sentence contains a fabricated "quote") in the first paragraph.
Assume any mechanical errors in the text of the letter were present in the
original. Note that Ms. Remes feels it would be not only be defamatory but
false to claim Parker's wine ratings and/or tasting notes are not
meaningful AND honest AND independent, etc. God help all you
Parker-bashers out there once Emily gets wind of what you've been writing
over the years. If you work in the wine trade she and Parker might try to
scare your boss into letting you go, and that'll just be the BEGINNING of
the remedies extracted from your sorry butts. THEN you'll have to read his
and Emily's prose.
While this appears to be the uninspired work-product of an attorney whose
heart isn't in the work, its intent is clear. This is old-fashioned
corporate bullying, done at the behest of a million-dollar critic who can't
take the kind of fare he dishes out. Since when is a publisher entitled to
remedies for grounded criticisms made of their products? Robert Parker is
a public figure dealing in opinion. He is as open to criticism as anyone
else. Should I retract my post and comply with these groundless demands?
What do you think?
Keep in mind what's at issue here. Parker has slipped up a bit. Not so
generously, I have pointed this out in the context of an ongoing discussion
about his retreaded new book. The law doesn't require that I be generous
in my criticism, however. It only requires that I don't libel him. Facing
dissonance between text and taste, to ask questions about how that may have
arisen is only reasonable. I never concluded that Parker didn't taste the
Grand Tinel '94 and I didn't manifestly intend for anyone else to do so. I
made no assertions in this regard at all. The closest I came to that was
to offer the opinion that you can't taste the wine and not spot a
difference. For all I know, as I said, Parker did taste the wine. The
tasting note doesn't reflect a difference, but it remains an open question
as to why that's so. All I did in the initial post and its follow-up was
to raise the questions the tasting notes and the wine demand.
I wouldn't know how to delete a post from a newsgroup if I wanted to do it.
And I don't. In fact, I'll copy the two relevant posts below so you can
review the record. And I'll post them over on rec.food.drink and a
free-speech newsgroup or two. Then I'll format the thing for Prodigy's
wine board and then maybe I'll post it on AOL. Feel free to put a copy
this post on CIS.
This isn't the first time Parker has viciously attacked (or, by his own
standards, libeled) critics of his work or his wines - and lashed out at
good-natured sorts like me who once long ago had the temerity to disagree
with him. But how many of you have had Emily put on your tail?
I won't tolerate this sort of bullying. Will you? Do you want to get
letters from Emily the next time you wonder on a newsgroup where Parker had
his head buried while he was trashing your favorite producer?
Actually, the next time a guy comes into my store and listens to me tell
him about a wine and then says "did you actually taste this wine?" (how
many times have you wondered silently or out loud whether a salesperson at
any level of the trade has actually tasted what he was spewing about?) I'm
going to slap him with a slander suit. We can get a chain of insane
frivolous litigation going. You can e-mail your views to Ms. Remes at
emily...@prenhall.com.
Here are the offensive texts. (But are they libelous? They were carefully
constructed NOT to be.) Doesn't it seem silly to attack me about something
like this rather than letting the issue die? Don't they realize I'm
younger than Parker and that I can spend years making ungenerous yet
always-fair commentary on his work?
>
>
On the subject of the new book from Robert Parker on the Rhone, I
thought I would test the book in a way I sometimes test books of this
sort.
I remembered an atypical wine for a particular estate and checked
the notes in the book to see if this atypical wine was noted as such.
The point is to check to see whether there is actual tasting being
reported on in the book, or whether completeness is being feigned. Of
course, such a test isn't conclusive, and it would need repeating many
times to support a serious claim against a given text. What I would
note, however, is that this sort of review can undermine or reinforce
confidence in a book. In this case my confidence was shaken at the
first example. Mr. Parker has published ratings of vintages before
tasting wines of the vintage; why not publish tasting notes on
untasted wines in the context of giving an overview of an estate?
I submit this in-store test for people who have tasted the inexpensive
1994 Grand Tinel Chateauneuf-du-Pape. I'm not going to submit a
tasting note. It's for you to decide whether the wine tastes like the
description and to note differences from previous examples. It seems
to me that this wine is markedly different in style from previous
vintages of Grand Tinel. While it is a perfectly good wine and it
merits recommendation for people who like the style, I have to wonder
how someone could publish a tasting note that sounds exactly like all
Parker's other tasting notes for good-vintage Grand Tinels. It has
the standard score, and even likens the wine to previous vintages.
Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes reviewers are just going on
autopilot and that what they say reflects their previous views more
than a new experience of a wine?
>
>
The quotes that begins the follow-up comes from Foster, who for all his
abrasiveness has been absolutely right through the years about Parker's
inhumanly thin skin (and his inability to brook disagreement).
>
>
"Oh sure, Parker sits at the computer and makes it all up. Please come
down to earth and post something that might have an ounce of credibility.
You want to argue he missed a description on a wine? Fine- but this kind
of stuff just destroys your credibility and gives Parker ammunition
when talking about the absurdity his critics. What a load of hogwash!"
I hesitate to reply to Bob Foster, but this is just bad reading.
I don't suggest Parker tastes NOTHING - merely that he may leaven his
endless work with what he takes to be innocent stretchings of the truth.
That is, for estates and wines he isn't excited about but that are similar
from year to year, he MAY, in the context of giving a summary of what the
estate does, write a note without tasting - or remembering tasting - a
wine. That is, he's faced with his section on, say, Grand Tinel. He
knows Grand Tinel tastes more or less the same every decent year. He takes
into account the vintage and does a little tasting note saying what it
should
taste like. Salespeople do this all the time. Maybe he DID taste the
wine and doesn't remember what he tasted when he sits down to write the
section.
But behold - Grand Tinel tastes quite DIFFERENT in '94 than it did any
year previously and there is no mention of this in the note. This isn't
just
missing a quality judgment - the whole CHARACTER of the wine has changed
and he has missed it. You can't taste this wine and not spot a difference.
Many people have said Parker wrote about estates in his Burgundy book
with which he had no personal experience. Everyone knows he grades
vintages
for his charts before he tastes the wines. Is this bit so exciting or
surprising?
Does it matter if Parker actually tastes or remembers every single
Muscadet he gives 84-87 points? They all taste like "gin and tonic" and
they're
all more or less the same quality with a little more or less fat depending
on
the weather - so long as we're talking about his favorite names. If he
fudges a little who's to care?
I care. It seems to me completeness isn't everything and that it
shouldn't be pretended to when it's not supportable. I don't contest that
Parker
does a tremendous amount of tasting - too much in fact. But maybe he
doesn't taste as much as we are led to believe - or he doesn't remember
as much of what he whips by as one might suppose.
This does indeed make me uncomfortable, especially given that this was
the FIRST wine I checked on - off the top of my head - when I opened the
book. I know I'm making no completely solid claims here. I'm just putting
the
subject up for discussion.
>
>
Maybe discussion is just too painful for Bob Parker to endure.
Paul Winalski
S.Miller wrote:
>
> For libel, you have to say something that is
> false, that you know is false, and that is damaging.
Not quite. It's also libel if it can be shown in
court that, even though you thought the falsehood
was true, you demonstrated a reckless disregard for
determining its truthfulness.
> You clearly
> believe everything you said. Also, you clearly stated that you were
> merely wondering about that quality of Parker's tastings, not that you
> were actually accusing him of wrongdoing.
The article as written could be interpreted as a veiled
insinuation that Parker printed a review of a wine that
he didn't taste. That's how Parker and S&S have
interpreted it.
Recall that Parker himself was successfully sued for
libel in France for an ill-considered "Hmm..." in
one of his reviews.
--PSW
BFSON
In article <33C5B1...@infinex.com>, "S.Miller" <smi...@infinex.com>
writes:
>You don't owe Simon, Shuster or Parker an apology or a retraction.
I hope you have lots of legal malpractice insurance before making those
kind of suggestions. Just out of curiousity, what law school did you
graduate from?
Bob Foster, Hastings Class of 1974
Stuart Yaniger
BFSON wrote:
>
> Parker has drawn an analogy between himself and Ralph Nader
Not a bad analogy, Bob. Nader has made a career out of distorting the
truth in order to scare people and sell books.
Paul Johnson
Free legal advise is worth what you pay for it. Anytime a rich man and a
corporation send you a letter threatening legal action take a deep
breath and back down. Of course, if you and your family own nothing of
value like a car or home, you can do (or say) anything you want.
--
MZ
BFSON
In article <19970712131...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, cd...@aol.com
(CDwin) writes:
>I'm sure we would all appreciate your posting the letter you get from
>Ralph Nader's lawyers so that we can compare it to RC's letter from
Robert
>Parker's publisher's lawyers. ;-)
Stuart probably still thinks the Corvair was a safe car. vbg
Bob
Stuart Yaniger
in just the right way can easily cover up the fact that the Corvair had
a similar safety record to other cars in its size and demographic range.
If you use the statistics the same way that Nader did, it's easy to
prove that ANY small car whose purchasing demographics are weighted
toward young males will have a worse overall safety record than all
other cars in aggregate.
A perfect example of Naderite argument (in my mind, rhetoric designed to
outrage at the expense of misleading) is Parker's continuous screed
against filtration at any time in any form. Look at the hatchet job he
does on Halliday and Johnson in his "Wine Buyer's Guide".
Stuart Yaniger
Doggy, there's reasonable debate and there's propagandizing. Statements
like "Their plea for compromised and standardized wines..."and "Hugh
Johnson... comes out strongly on the side of processed, neutral wines.."
are screed, not debating.