Whether you are a celebrity or an just a ordinary person, being victimized by a stalker must be a horrible, disgusting experience. The law should come down on stalkers like a ton of bricks.
ESPN's Erin Andrews recently filed a civil lawsuit for invasion of privacy, negligence, and emotional distress against a Marriott hotel in Nashville and the peeping tom who filmed her through a hotel room peephole seeking a total of $10 million in damages. The perpetrator himself is already serving 2-1/2 years in federal prison for his misdeeds.
Reuters reports that...
According to the lawsuit, Andrews said the hotel was guilty of negligence for, among other things, allowing Barrett to know that Andrews was staying in the hotel and then allowing him to book a room next to her own. Andrews was in Nashville to cover a Vanderbilt University football game.
She also said the hotel was negligent for failing to discover Barrett altered the peephole of the plaintiff's hotel room door, allowing the videos to be taken.
The suit said the videotaping and posting of the nude images continues to cause Andrews "great emotional distress and embarrassment."Presumably hotels around the country have retrofitted the peepholes to prevent this kind of sick activity from happening again to anyone.
The hotel room video went viral on the Internet as everyone probably remembers. In May 2010, Elisabeth Hasselback of The View got into a lot of trouble for saying that the convicted stalker could have avoided jail and seen almost as much of Andrews just by watching her on Dancing with the Stars. Hasselback apologized on air the next day.
Here are Hasselback's original remarks followed by what appears to be a heartfelt apology:
Hasselback, who parlayed a near-win on the second season of Survivor into a talk show career, is the token conservative on The View, which puts her under a lot of unfair pressure even on a good day. Despite the resources that she can likely command for prep work, however, Hasselback is sadly seldom able to effectively refute the usual liberal claptrap (based on the footage we've seen on the Internet) from all the other regulars on that show on a daily basis when the subject under discussion is politics.
In this particular instance, she stumbled into the minefield of political correctness that goes well beyond the usual partisan ideological conflicts (and during which one of the other panelists indicates that it's okay to be half naked if you're being paid).
For some reason, Eric Bolling of FNC'sThe Five described Hasselbeck as "so smart" in a November broadcast, which makes us glad Bolling is not managing our stock portfolio.
Irrespective of her lackluster debating skills, were Hasselback's original comments out of line? Or was she saying what others might have been thinking at the time?
