I don’t know if you all remember AutoAdmit, the racist, misogynist back of one-handed typing law-school wankers. If you don’t remember them, let me refresh your memory: they had a fine old time posting pictures, lies, and contact information about the women they went to school with. They talked about when one woman went to the gym, and encouraged each other to take cell-phone photos of her. They’ve posted rape threats about Jill and other women before.
They did this anonymously, while posting the names and contact info of these women. When confronted with this crap, Anthony Ciolli, one of the founders of the site, chalked it off to freedom of speech. When the women asked him to take this down, and take down the lies posted about them, he refused.
Now, apparently, when other people exercise their freedom of speech and complain about Ciolli, it’s terribly oppressive. He blames Jill for the fact that his job offer was rescinded. It had nothing to do with, oh, creating a site where anonymous commenters could post the private contact information about women, lie about them, and encourage each other to take photos of them. Nope. Not at all.
What’s especially hilarious, is the last line of Anthony’s AutoAdmit post:
Believe me, the last thing I wanted was this to be public. I just want to be left alone.
So did the women you and your idiot cohorts lied about. But that won’t happen when you post their personal contact information, spread slander, and open them up to harassment. Some of whom had their own employment prospects wrecked–not through their behavior, but through the lies of the inbred entitled misogynists on your site.
Update: Ciolli insisted that the Wall Street Journal must have contacted Jill and given her a heads up about where he got the job offer, and that she therefore must have contacted them. In the comments at Feministe, PG pointed out that Ciolli posted this information himself. Try again, Anthony.
74 Responses to “If your windows are cracking, it’s because of Anthony Ciolli’s whining”
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what goes around comes around. the guy should STFU and take his medicne. Jill’s posts have been perfectly fair and accurate on the AA thing right from the start.
ditto^^^
Poetic justice.
“Be silent, and people may think you a fool…”
I haven’t enjoyed the turn of karma’s wheel so much since that guy on the subway was caught wanking in front a girl, who photographed him on her camera phone and got that sucker arrested. He turned out to be, not some random sleaze, but a semi-famous chef in a local restaurant, indignant that some nobody girl had dared to catch him at his disgusting exhibitionism. It was delightful.
http://www.gothamist.com/2006/04/19/subway_flasher.php
So is this. Bite it, Ciolli.
I find it almost painful to see how much Ciolli doesn’t get it. Hello? Hello? (bangs phone on desk)
You know, while I do understand the free speech argument, I’m amazed at how many people don’t understand the law firm’s response.
They said, basically, that they are not the kind of company that stands by idly when crap like this goes on. And while Ciolli might not have had the direct authority to pull the postings (as he claimed), he also sat quietly by, and accepted whatever benefits came with his position.
Show me he railed against such behavior, show that he angrily denounced the folks who did that, show me that he said “I can’t moderate this forum, but this is despicable behavior!” and then you’ll have my feeling some sympathy for him losing his offer.
But if he hasn’t done that (and all indicators are that he hasn’t - sorry, I haven’t followed the story well enough to be sure), I salute EAP&D for having distinguished themselves as caring about honorable behavior.
I’ll certainly be applying to them when I graduate. That’s the kind of company i’d like to be working for.
May I say that I agree completely with all of the above. He let his alligator mouth overload his hummingbird a** and is paying the price. Karma can be an EXTREME bee-otch!
Edwards, Angell covered their asses thoroughly on this one, mind. They conducted correspondence with Ciolli about this a month after the WaPo article came out, asking him to justify his actions. When he did, they didn’t find his justifications in line with what they want in an employee, so they rescinded the offer.
Note that they didn’t say they were terminating the offer due to his behavior on the board or his running of it, but due to his failure to adequately distance himself from it, including all the threats and harassment.
Undoubtedly, they spent the month in between the article and their first letter to him researching thoroughly any laws they could run afoul of in terminating the offer. Some people have raised provisions of the Mass. civil rights statute that prohibit terminating people for exercising free speech rights. But if you read the excerpts from the letters on the WSJ Law Blog, they’re quite careful not to say that what he said was the problem.
Plus, the whining about Jill tipping off the WSJ guy is ludicrous. As if someone at the Wall Street Journal doesn’t have sources inside the firm.
I believe this is what they call “just desserts.” (Yummy.)
Even if Jill had personally contacted the law firm and urged them to reconsider their offer based on Ciolli’s behavior she’d still have been perfectly in the right.
The more assholes are exposed to negative consequences of their actions, the better for all of us.
Hee hee … what a twit and cowardly scumbag. He will never get a job in the legal profession if he doesn’t take responsibility for the site he created and take down those offensive postings. That is my humble, non-legal opinion. Finish what you started, fucko.
Really now, folks. While it’s tempting to succumb to the blandishments of schadenfreude, it does no one any good to revel in this sadly demented man’s misfortune, as self-generated as it may have been. Such glee in the misfortunes of others is corrosive to the soul, and we really ought to be the bigger people and BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA I can’t keep that up any longer! HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHA!
*cough*
He thinks this sucks, he should just wait until the magic of Google-Fu kicks in for, let’s see, according to my rough calculations it will be approximately, carry the six… the rest of his life.
Ahhhhhhhh. This made my day. When things get annoying, I’ll just remember that one sexist pig got kicked in the karma, really hard.
Ah, I think it’s time to dust off the phrase “whiny-ass titty babies”.
Heh. What a whiny-ass titty baby. Cry more, emo kid.
(By the way, did you mean to file this under ‘Abortion Rights’?)
Chris, some massively well advertised “good works” might move those entries to the bottom of page one, maybe even to page two in a decade. Of course, he is going to have to be doing some serious work to change the Google-fu, he really needs to get started on that soon.
Was he the only one, or have all the boys who indulged themselves been caught?
Unfortunately, the posters were all anonymous. They were just fine with posting the private addresses, phone numbers, and routines of the women they were trashing though. ‘Cause that takes a spine.
/sarcasm
While it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, I simply have to voice my unease with the politics of personal destruction, even when done for the right cause. Getting people fired is the right’s strategy. (I know.) Scalp-collecting bothers me to no end. Granted, we didn’t do anything to get him fired, but needless to say, I have to protest any and all attempts in the future to separate a person from his job because of his opinions in a non-work capacity.
But Amanda, it wasn’t just his opinions - he was endangering women by allowing their addresses to be posted, refusing to disclose who posted them, and refusing to close the boards. That’s actionable.
Agreed, Amanda, but I’m glad this unfolded this way because:
1) We *didn’t* go after his head. The law firm seems to have come to this conclusion themselves (the super seekret feminist cabal notwithstanding!)
2) Finally, some goddamned consequences for people who enable/excuse/downplay threats against women. After Kathy Sierra, I’m glad to see it.
Not only that, but I’d wager a guy like that is a scumbag to work with, too—-if you’re a woman, or any of the groups he slagged off on his board. The company was probably worried about getting sued in years to come for being harassed by a guy who had….. a history of harassing women.
I totally see Amanda’s point and I certainly would want the same work/life separation applied to me should a situation ever arise, but in this case I have to go with magickitty. Amanda, you hurt some people’s feeeeeelings. Ciolli’s active neglect put careers and personal safety in jeopardy for numerous women.
IIRC, his attitude toward the women who were harassed on this board was “Sucks to be you.” Now he’s on the receiving end. Good.
Grendelkhan, thanks, and I fixed it (and added a few links and an update).
Amanda, if all he was doing was expressing an opinion, I’d agree with you. But he enabled–and refused to stop–slander, threats, and harassment on his board. The women whose personal information was put up on the boards contacted them and asked them to take it down; they refused. They shrugged off the slander on the boards (which isn’t a part of free speech). They didn’t get what the big deal was when people made rape threats and references to “hate fucking” Jill. They didn’t think it was at all a problem that these bully-boys posted information about one woman and where/when she went to the gym, as well as posts encouraging people to take her picture with their cell phones. All while allowing the bullies to remain anonymous. No privacy for the bitches, but privacy for the bully-boys.
There’s a big difference between someone saying stupid or offensive stuff, and someone allowing slander to be aired and private information about private citizens to be made public. What he allowed does not fall under free speech.
Amanda, there is simply no way that this amounts to anyone pressuring Edwards Angell or getting Ciolli “fired.” And Im not saying that just because I approve of the end result. Ciolli, arguably, did something really really public and really really stupid that the law firm, quite rightly, though indicated a massive lack of judgement on Ciolli’s part that might open them up, in future years, to serious legal liability. At the very least his public behavior and his unwillingness to distance himself from autoadmit and its posters and their actions, revealed him to be the kind of person you don’t want as a co-worker. That would be as true if he was discovered to enjoy mooning elderly women, masturbating inpublic, or chewing tobacco and spitting in the soup. It would be true, and was true, even if no individual women had complained to any particular law firm. Its just something that was true of Ciolli–he’s an asshole.
Check out hte thread on this topic over at WSN to find out just how stupid–how bone deep stupid–Ciolli’s friends and followers are. That alone would be enough to put me off ciolli, if I were looking to hire. Hanging with morons isn’t proof positive of lack of judgement but its sure a good indication.
The funniest part of that commentary over there is how astonishingly rapidly his defenders zip from
Edwards Angell is a communist/PC stooge for refusing to hire Ciolli to
Edwards Angell is a capitalist running dog interested only in profit for refusing to hire Ciolli
See, its *wrong* for the firm to refuse to hire Ciolli on moral grounds because everyone knows that law firms have no morality and are only interested in the bottom line.
And its immoral for the firm to refues to hire Ciolli on practical, business grounds because everyone knows that Ciolli was acting on an unpopular but important prinnciple (free speech or the marketplace of ideas or girls are ho’s take your pick) that Edwards Angell should be happy to subsidize.
aimai
What he allowed does not fall under free speach
Oh, it does. There’s even a federal statute that says people who provide a web forum aren’t responsible for what’s said in comments.
But of course, the thing about the right to free speach is that it’s a protection against state action. As private individuals, we don’t have to tolerate his hateful crap, and his potential employer certainly doesn’t have to hire him–all “free speach” means is that he can’t be put in jail . . .
This is reallly off topic, but I went back and looked at some of the horrible AutoAdmit threads that said those awful things about Jill. I noticed that someone was posting there as “Richy McBeef.” This was in 2005, well before Seun-Hui’s play started to make its rounds on the internet. Is there any other etymology for this name? Is it a Guns and Roses song or something, too? Or is it all just a creepy coincidence?
I meant *Seung-Hui.
Also, his statements in the WaPo article showed that he has very, very poor judgment and lacks the kind of professionalism that the firm expects from its attorneys. Like I said above, they didn’t ding him for what he said, or even what he allowed to be said on the board, but for his failure to denounce or distance himself from the threats of violence, revelation of personal information and sexist, racist and bigoted discussion. They gave him a chance to distance himself, and he just tried to shift the blame onto Cohen.
One of the things that lawyers take very seriously is client confidentiality. If this guy’s letting anonymous posters reveal personal information about their classmates and doesn’t see anything wrong with it, the firm may have a problem with imagining him keeping his mouth shut about client confidences.
They also undoubtedly had concerns about whether he might be using Edwards, Angell computer resources to post to or run what can be characterized as a hate site — something which is surely contrary to the firm’s stated goals of workplace diversity. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s not checking to see whether he was doing that as a summer associate last year, before he resigned his position with AutoAdmit.
As for the rape threats, his condoning of them in the name of free speech would appear to an employer as if he’s a sexual-harassment suit waiting to happen.
In short, this guy screwed himself. The real impetus for all this seems to be the WaPo article, where they got a glimpse of the real Ciolli and didn’t like what they saw.
Amanda says: “I simply have to voice my unease with the politics of personal destruction, even when done for the right cause.”
I respectfully disagree.
“The politics of personal destruction”, as I understand the term, has to do with destroying the reputation of someone you are competing with for something (e.g., the presidency.)
This, on the other hand, is a case of karmic payback, pure and simple. Fucker had it coming.
grendelkhan/sheelzebub:
I liked it listed as Abortion Rights.
EAP&D exercised their right to abort the career of an asshole.
Well done!
“The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.”
Amanda:
No self-appointed spokesperson created a national furor over the non-work-related postings Mr. Ciolli was responsible for. No religious wingnut, or, in this case, women’s rights advocate (not that they’re wingnuts, just that they’d be the group most likely to object), made such a stink about his position on “their” issues that he had to gracefully resign in the interests of the greater good. It’s generous of you to equate his situation with your own, but there’s one *crucial* difference: he had it coming. You. Did. Not.
I agree with Zuzu, Amanda - he wasn’t taken down for his beliefs or for his blog postings that had shit all to do with the demands of his job, like you were. Cioli was taken down because 1)the issues raised by the autoadmit postings were of rather direct importance to his ability to perform his job and advance within the organiztion and 2)he had no fucking idea how to deal with a potential employer in a mature, professional manner.
This guy is so full of himself and was so sure of himself for somebody who is the legal profession equivalent of a newly hatched worm it is totally pathetic. I fully expect a pair of hellicopter parents to swoop in and try to fix it all because this guy didn’t emerge with these delusions of omnipotent grandeur all on his lonesome!
Look at it this way, Amanda. If he had walked into a job interview with the button “I hate women” on his lapel, would the firm be justified in not making him an offer? This is the equivalent. He let his name be associated online with this sort of ideology, did NOT attempt to distance himself from it, and it was unacceptable to his employers, and that’s their right.
What happened to you was sad but not surprising, given the cultural climate in this country, and you decided not to make your employers take on the risk of defending you during the campaign. It’s a related type of situation in that it illustrates how transparent our lives are with the internet around, but not exactly the same.
Damn…I read autoadmit/xoxohth a few times when I considered law school and mostly an entertaining bunch of elitists…didn’t think they’d cross the line that far.
Ms. Kate,
Really? You think Poppy and Barb “Granny Goodness” Bush parented this pompous idiot too?
I finally went over there just to browse around a bit. Ick.
Among the current topics: A guy sitting in a library asks an “ethical question”: some girl near him had asked him to watch her stuff for a moment, but hadn’t come back in 15 minutes. Is he ethically obligated to wait for her or can he just walk away now? First response: Is she hot? Only a half-dozen similar comments before the girl returns and renders the question moot.
Seriously, this is considered an ethical debate? Don’t they teach ethics, or have these dweebs not yet had that course?
A bit further down, an exceedingly long thread about why hispanic women are fat. Or are they? Nary a peep about what a racist and sexist the question itself is.
And, yep, a whole lot of obsessing about prestige among various schools and firms. When I’m ready to apply for law school, I think I’m going to avoid any school with a hint of prestige, since this seems to be the type of student they attract.
I have to throw in my two cents with those saying that Amanda’s situation was totally different. Not just ‘cause I like Amanda and not the autoadmit crybaby assholes. Amanda was forced from her job for her personal opinions that some people didn’t like, which is outrageous and fascistic; Mr. Entitlement had his job offer rescinded because of his involvement in a message board that actually threatened real people with real violence, so his future employer realized he was just not someone they wanted on their team. And I too think it’s fine to try to get someone removed from their job if what you find out about them online seems like it might make them unfit for that job. Nobody would bat an eye if a teacher was fired following the discovery that his or her myspace page featured sexual pictures of underage kids.
I know it’s been made clear that this whole 1st ammendment argument of his is basically garbage, but I was just wondering something. I only took one law class when I was in journalism school many moons ago, so my knowledge may be rusty, but I thought that in pretty much any situation you can come up with, threats of violence are not protected speech (imminent danger, or something?). In fact, I thought it was sort of illegal to threaten violence and stalk someone. Am I incorrect?
Ethyl,
I kind of look at it as if a landlord had done nothing to prevent the stalking of a tenant, or knowingly harbored a drug dealer or stalker.
Cioli was the Autoadmit landlord. He didn’t take down the threats, and tolerated all sorts of inappropriate and even illegal goings on on his property. He let the meth crew cook and claimed it wasn’t his problem.
‘And, yep, a whole lot of obsessing about prestige among various schools and firms. When I’m ready to apply for law school, I think I’m going to avoid any school with a hint of prestige, since this seems to be the type of student they attract.’
I wouldn’t sell yourself short…law school is the one place where you go drastically affects your prospects.
If you crack 165 and your grades aren’t horrible, you’re doing yourself a HUGE disservice by not going to at least one of the top 30-40, unless you absolutely can’t relocate or can’t afford anything less than a huge scholarship.
I’m making sure that my husband sees this. He handles lots of high-end lawyer placements–not wet-bottomed babies like Ciolli, but people who’ve been around for ten or twenty or thirty years.
And I’ve told our kids: Be careful what you post. Someone will cache it and use it against you, if it’s stupid. A parenting issue I couldn’t have foreseen twenty years ago, when I was still pregnant with my eldest…
So, Cioli spent the summer as an intern at this law firm, and fully expected to be hired in the fall.
Once the whole shameful autoadmit story broke, I wonder: did a certain law firm who had employed a certain 2L go back and do some checking of its computer system and find that somebody had been doing some administrative work or even some posting to certain areas of a certain tainted site contrary to his story about “not having any power blah blah”?
If I felt that the law firm was rescinding their offer over bad publicity, I’d dislike it.
But I feel that the law firm said “There was this thing happening. What actions did you take? Why did you choose to take those actions?”
And his answer was not in line with their company ethic. They said “you’re not the kind of man we thought you were when we extended the offer.”
Now, if I’m wrong, then I share your concern. You’re right, it’s not right to go after someone’s job because you don’t like them.
But I don’t think anyone went after his scalp. I know lawyers a bit better than some, and I find it really easy to believe that they were just put off by his behavior… that if they’d learned about it, on the sly, and there’d been no major news stories about it, they still would have asked why he did what he did (and didn’t do what he didn’t) and rescind the offer if they didn’t like the answer.
Ciolli was not fired. He had an offer for a job, which he had not yet started. The firm rescinded the offer in light of his ongoing assholery.
It also doesn’t appear that the firm said “Your site is icky, goodbye,” but gave him a chance to explain WTF was going on.
And believe me, “I had the power but, like, free speech, what could I do?” is exactly the wrong attitude to have as a lawyer. Is that going to be Ciolli’s answer if a client commits perjury? If a CEO says maybe those incriminating documents should be shredded? If a subordinate is lying to the Court?
Yeah, this is only partly true, because a big piece of getting the choice soul sucking job in corporate America is dependent on who you know AND what school you went to.
I went to a small law school that embraced diversity and with a minimum of idiots who seem to populate the top tier schools, like these fools intent on torturing others because their patriarchal right to step on other people as the scramble to the top.
But then I wanted my soul to stay intact, not all lawyers care about that.
If the idiots at auto admit are exactly why no emphasis should be placed on what school you went to… just like the joke about the person who graduates last in their class at medical school is still a doctor, so does one who graduates from less than the top 40 is still a lawyer (once they bass their state’s Bar).
If you crack 165 and your grades aren’t horrible, you’re doing yourself a HUGE disservice by not going to at least one of the top 30-40, unless you absolutely can’t relocate or can’t afford anything less than a huge scholarship.
There’s exactly one law school in my state’s public university “system” and I don’t want to take a year off from school to establish residency anywhere else. I’m in junior year now and so far have no student loan debt. I will be getting loans for LS, but I expect to finish it with as little debt as possible. That’s the plan, anyway. So far, so good.
I’m also disgusted with elitism in general, so even with other options, I’m not interested in being around it. Any person, or firm for that matter, who would judge me by the logo above my degree is not someone with whom I want to associate.
As for keeping my soul intact, yep, that’s also a huge priority.
Look, I worked for 20 years before going back to college and never earned more than 25k in a year. I don’t have any pressing need to walk into a 150k corporate law job. If I can make 2 or, dare I wish, 3 times what I made before school, I’ll be happy. My interests tend towards civil rights and employment discrimination. I have no illusions about getting rich that way.
Back to the topic, though…
That’s a large part of what this story is about: piggish behavior and genuinely harmful misogynistic stalking is bad enough on its own, but what really galls is the infantile refusal on Cialli’s (and his defenders’) part to recognize that they don’t have the right to do this. Talk about entitlement… That Feministe thread of Mar. 8-9 is amazing. They really refuse to get it. They can’t even recognize when they’ve had their asses handed to them even as someone hands them their ass while saying, “here’s your ass.”
No amount of prestige is worth dealing with pricks like that.
I simply have to voice my unease with the politics of personal destruction, even when done for the right cause. [..]Scalp-collecting bothers me to no end.
I see a distinction between “politics of personal destruction” and “scalp collecting”:
Personal destruction is about attacking a person by digging through their personal lives looking for any dirt or possible weakness, whether it’s relevant to the current issues or completely done and over with. This is what Scaife and Murdock did to the Clintons.
Scalp-collecting is about holding individuals accountable for their own actions. The issues involved are current and directly relevant, and the actions are generally illegal or unethical. This is what “Fitzmas” is all about: we want the responsible person to pay; not just any random person will do.
(I probably have an overdeveloped sense of vengeance, particularly these days when I see bad guy after bad guy getting away with the most reprehensible shit, and getting only a medal of freedom as their come-uppance.)
We don’t know exactly what went on in the collective mind of the law firm. Perhaps they didn’t like the publicity, perhaps they wanted to shield themselves from future lawsuits, perhaps they felt the affair revealed important new information about a job applicant that they had formerly been unaware of.
But ultimately it’s impossible to keep work-related and non-work-related speech entirely separate. No matter how much of a wall you try to construct, people are always going to make the connection, and it’s not always wrong for them to do so. I wouldn’t want a current member of the Klan (a purely expressive association, according to the courts) running the Civil Rights section of the Justice Department, for example, no matter how good a lawyer they were and how vehemently they promised to follow the law in their day job.
To answer Jenny’s off-topic question, the display names on autoadmit are linked with one “account,” but can be modified. When you change your display name, the board changes the name on all the posts associated with that name to your current name.
Ciolli should be damn thankful it even came to what it did. Employers generally have no legal obligation to even give specific reasons for rejecting applicants (you’d think as a conservative he’d be pro-corporate-rights across the board, but it stops once it’s HIM who doesn’t get the job.)
Robw and bluestocking–
Sorry, I was probably over the line on what I said.
However, employers most certainly should “judge you by the logo above your degree” if you went to somewhere like Cooley, LOL.
Or Regent, for that matter… Ok, I’m a hypocrite: if I saw that on a prospective employee’s resume, it would go right into the trashcan.
It’s all good, Ace. I get what you’re saying, and I thank you for the well-intended advice. I should have paid more attention to the part you said about not being able to relocate- that’s about exactly my situation.
LOL, re: Regent and Ave Maria, it’s funny how conservatives complain about affirmative action when they hire from schools which, judging from bachelor’s GPAs (generally at easier undergrads than elite schools) and LSATs, are clearly not as bright as other high-level Washington figures.
I guess my perspective on “elitism” is a little skewed because I’ve been around “elitist” peers ever since said peers were conscious of such an idea (went to a high school where basically everyone went straight to college, and had several elementary school classmates who were excellent students at that high school or similar ones.)
I remember one of my friends having to “justify” to everyone why was “just” going to Ohio State for undergrad despite his getting like 1430 on the SAT; turned out to be an excellent fit for him.
Hey, graduating from Regent worked out GREAT for Monica Goodling!
My advice on law school application, along with comments from those who disagreed with me.
I think Amanda’s situation with the Edwards campaign was different mostly inasmuch as politics and BigLaw are different fields.
In favor of keeping Amanda: politicians have an obligation to take moral stances, and liberal politicians’ stances should be in favor of free speech and Amanda’s substantive points about how people are hurt by prohibitions on condoms and abortions.
In favor of keeping Ciolli: BigLaw doesn’t take many moral stances beyond “yay diversity” and “yay pro bono.” Given that people have gotten fired from law firms for harassment (and in the view of some legal scholars, sexual and racial harassment should be protected free speech), they’re quite clearly not on the cutting edge of anti-censorship. I’ve worked at a firm where it would have been a bad idea to trash Bush — because several of the partners had ties to the Administration. I don’t think I was “censored,” I was just in a conservative environment and keeping quiet accordingly. So no reason here to keep Ciolli.
In favor of losing Amanda: politicians prudentially have to worry about alienating any large block of voters. Even if some of the Republican candidates privately think that it’s an unfair double standard to fire Don Imus while continuing to play gangsta rap, none of them is dumb enough to ally themselves with a man who was fired for racist speech. Edwards could not afford to be painted as being supportive of “anti-Catholic” speech, even if Amanda was not speaking against Catholicism as a whole, merely particular doctrines or interpretations of doctrine.
In favor of losing Ciolli: law firms prudentially don’t want to hire someone who could be a liability. In all the Xoxohthians efforts to Googlebomb Edwards Angell regarding a lawyer still on staff there who has been arrested for either manslaughter or negligent homicide (of course, the ignoramuses of AutoAdmit describe him as a “murderer”…), they ignore that there’s a big difference between a proven commodity like the accused, and a relatively unknown quantity like a prospective hire. It’s a lot easier to lose an offer than it is to get fired, especially from a law firm.
Frankly, the only reason to keep Ciolli is the concern about a bad image among law students who think that Ciolli has behaved in a perfectly good way. And if Edwards Angell was sincere about being concerned regarding Ciolli’s ethics, and not just about the bad publicity, then it shouldn’t care about a bad imagine among that group of students anyway.
Let’s not forget that Ciolli resigned from AutoAdmit after the WaPo article and some particularly ugly twists in the cyber-harassment saga. So, we know he didn’t care about free speech when his little website became a liability.
Ciolli and Cohen’s site sparked meetings of the deans of major law schools. The last straw may have been when a member of the AA peanut gallery decided it would be smart to send a mass email to the faculty of an elite law school in a ham-handed attempt to discredit a student. The backlash against Ciolli and Cohen was huge and well-deserved.
Ciolli’s name is mud in the profession. He made enemies with a whole crop of up-and-coming women, many from much more prestigious programs than his own. He also pissed off profs from top schools nationwide.
The charges against the Edwards bloggers were complete fabrications. Donohue lied and distorted to get them fired. The Edwards campaign was right to stand by the bloggers because Amanda and Melissa always embodied the best values of Edwards ‘08, regardless of what some loud white dude in a suit said on TV.
Anthony Ciolli stands for nothing, and no decent firm would stand by him.
see, my guess for why they’d withdraw the offer is simple.
“Right. he does shit like this to people he’s at school with, he might do it to women at the firm. And even if we fired him at the first hint of a complaint, we’re still opening outselves up to a HUGE lawsuit by hiring him. why not hire competent employees who WON’T get us sued?”
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/03/lets-talk-about-autoadmit.html
As always, Althouse is full of insight on this issue. The problem, ladies, is that you just haven’t put in enough time at the School of Hardknocks. When you get older, you’ll start to see that having your name and reputation smeared on Google has little to do with whether or not you get the jobs and opportunities that you want. Wait a few year, you’ll look back on the rape threats and the gym stalking and the skull-fucking comments, and just “laugh it off.”
I never had problems with Althouse till today. I thought she was an eccentric, mildly amusing, but sort of interesting lawyer-prof type. Now, I am really saddened and creeped out. Imagine turning to someone like this for advice: “Laugh it off.” Ha ha ha.
(Well, hold that thought–Anthony Ciolli, you know where to turn…)
A guy like that is bound to be a problem, not just outside of work, but at work, too.
It’s scary that someone with such attitudes, and who is willing to engage in such behaviour, would be representing people, including women, in a legal capacity. It’s scary to think that he will have a voice in the courts.
What he’s done and what he’s allowed to be done is terribly destructive, not just to the individual victims, but to our society as a whole.
It’s good to see so many people express outrage at this.
(I probably have an overdeveloped sense of vengeance, particularly these days when I see bad guy after bad guy getting away with the most reprehensible shit, and getting only a medal of freedom as their come-uppance.)
Anyone else remember when, (according to certain Republican’t radio hosts we won’t mention) because the Leader of the Free World was having Oral Sex With Someone Who Was Not His Wife, it was going to cause waves of immoral behavior across America?
Does anybody think there might have been a bit of projection in those statements by the people who now see no problem with trying, and getting away with, as much reprehensible behavior as they legally can (while trying to change the laws to make their reprehensible behavior legal)? And, if so, what the heck anyone can do about it?
I never had problems with Althouse till today. I thought she was an eccentric, mildly amusing, but sort of interesting lawyer-prof type. Now, I am really saddened and creeped out. Imagine turning to someone like this for advice: “Laugh it off.� Ha ha ha.
The best part of that, of course, is that if you say anything even mildly critical of Althouse, she goes completely ballistic and begins whining about how she’s being “attacked.” She’s probably one of the most thin-skinned bloggers out there.
So, once again, a nasty case of, “Good enough for thee but not for me.”
*Reads Althouse thread*
*Takes hot shower with lots of soap, trying yet failing to scrub off all the borderline personality disorder*
You know, my admiration for Jon Swift just keeps growng and growing.
Well, it sounds like Althouse is flattered because she found a page of Autoadmit featuring a discussion of whether or not she was hot in the 1960s, and whether or not the folks on the list would have “boinked” her had they been alive back then.
I wonder if she would be as amused if she came across comments by people who’ve taken obviously classes with her, comments detailing how these people plan to follow her home and assault her after class?
I don’t know how a woman who is also a professor and a lawyer could find the majority of comments on Autoadmit amusing. She also has a post up questioning the validity of Ciolli’s firing, basically asking. “What kind of law firm would do this? What are their values? They certainly don’t seem to believe in free speech.”
Is she *really* a professor? I mean, she sounds as dense as the people on Autoadmit. Except that I can sort of understand how some of them are still too ignorant to appreciate why Ciolli’s career is screwed.
I found this recent autoadmit post via bitchphd. It disturbs me even more than the graphic threats, because it is a defense of humour and a good time, and I like to defend those things too. If I squint up my brain, I can almost imagine this person’s point of view. I would have to have made it to being a fun loving, educated 20 something with no empathy skills whatsoever, and with no sense of any reality apart from my own, nor any curiosity that there might be such. I just don’t know what to say to this. I don’t know where I would begin.
I’ve personally seen some of the shit she pulls, and as a lawyer, she doesn’t get to have the excuse of not knowing how to construct a logical argument. (I’m not saying I’ve seen much indication that she *can*… but as a class, lawyers are supposed to be able to do so. Note that having the ability does not require one to use that ability. If Althouse is competent, we have proof of that last statement.)
She’s got no call to be such a whiner… especially not when she is attacked for cause.
Penny, from what source are you quoting?
magickitty–
That comes from an AutoAdmit post. Google this…
“What XOXO does is driven by a general spirit of pranksterism and misogyny(some tongue in cheek, some real)”
…and you’ll find it.
I don’t know if this is good or bad (probably good for Althouse but sad for me in some way). However, I realized just now that I find her recent posts about Autoadmit so offensive and hurtful to women’s rights that I can’t even bear to impersonate her anymore…
Good bye, Ann Althouse. I renounce you.
Ah, yes, the “I was only joking!” defense. Also known as the last refuge of a scoundrel.
If you have to explain that it was a joke, it wasn’t that funny, dude.
Since when have conservative, risk adverse decisions by a serious law firm become politically correct?
I think the AA crowd is suffering from an severe denial brought about by a solid whopping dose of reality. The really don’t own and control the world! Their theoretically formulated “lawyerly” defenses aren’t being accepted! Imagine!
Here is what the Feminist Law Professors blog had to say about AutoAdmit a couple of months ago. The discussion about consequences to careers for lack of ethical responsibility forshadows the ultimate shutdown. http:// feministlawprofs.law.sc.e…p=1602#comments
“If anything, the comments on this blog seem closer to what XOXO is being accused of being than XOXO is itself.”
Let me get this straight: the things people are saying on this blog are what they’re accused of saying on this blog, but they’re not the kinds of things people really *mean* on this blog when they do say them.
Sounds like the “depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” strategy.
Must go lie down: very dizzy from trying to see from such a skewed perspective. This sort of thing is probably much easier to understand if you can actually get your head up into your ass.
I think the AA crowd is suffering from an severe denial brought about by a solid whopping dose of reality.
Of course. It’s not supposed to happen to them. That’s Different!
Hence the sudden insistence that threats of rape and stalking are merely ‘tongue in cheek’.