I may be annoying you with my coyness regarding the response to Waltrip. To be honest, at this point I'm not sure what my reasoning is; but I'll stick with it unless there's a reason not to, out of stubbornness if for no other reason!
I repeat, however, that I support everything that was said in that response, and the way it was said as far as I can recall in Chavez's article. (The email was supposed to be scandalous because...why again? I'm black and I'm angry with racists who are threatening me. But in America I'm not allowed to be like that. This is a very important point and in fact the reason I wrote my essay he way I did.) Note that on Waltrip's website, he has the email signed "Asst. Prof. of Math," which I'm 99% sure is not how I ever signed any email.
Regarding your critique of Robert Stacy McCain, it could be worth pursuing this issue for a number of reasons: It might show collusion. This is what I speculate: Tim Chavez and the Tennessean were very concerned about lawyers at that stage, which is why they delayed a week before publishing. But after about two days, literally, my lawyer was out of the way. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer (John Harper, I believe)---who was *recommended* to me by Ben Jealous's wife, Lia Epperson Jealous!---acknowledged hearing about my problems and their urgency, but did nothing. And---you would have to check, but this was unbeknownst to me at the time---I think that week Gordon Gee and Michael Schoenfeld were bashing me in The Tennessean and in The Hustler, so the Tennessean realized I had no protection even from my employer.
In fact their publishing an email not confirmed by me was a clear violation of journalistic ethics. Their publishing against his wishes an email that was written by someone is a direct violation of a copyright statute. (I didn't want to press this point too much since they then might claim that all emails written using a Vanderbilt account belonged to Vanderbilt, and Vanderbilt would, of course, be only to happy to oblige.) They gave the usual argument that I was a "public individual", because I wrote the essay and perhaps because I had run for Congress. This is a specious argument of course: (a) I'm not Bill Clinton; (b) even celebrities win lawsuits and obtain injunctions all the time.
The fact that they waited a week proved they didn't quite believe this argument either. They felt that if they added some positive comments about me, that might protect them as well.
For this reason, in my belief, Chavez referred to The Washington Times article. Then it is not The Tennessean breaking the law, but The Tennessean reporting on something in the public record.
So it could be that Chavez was working with McCain to obtain this cover, as McCain refers to The Tennessean. So each can say, "It's not me, it's in the public record." We already know McCain was duplicitous in quoting the 66 year-old reader, making it seem as if that person was responding to my essay, when in fact---literally---my essay was a response to that person. (I had asked the Tennessean if I could respond, and they said Yes.) It makes sense to say that fellow neo-Confederates McCain and Waltrip were working together, and obviously Chavez and Waltrip were working together---which is why Chavez took pains to hide Waltrip's true identity: not a mere "accountant" but a senior activist in a neo-Confederate organization.
Now, regarding my diffidence again: I don't want to fall victim to the neo-Confederates' jujitsu, making the focus be on "Jonathan Farley". They deliberately tried to make it seem like I was the only person who had a problem, and as McCain's December 2009 post shows, they are still doing that: McCain says that "*Jonathan Farley* waged the campaign against Confederate Memorial Hall," not "hundreds of students waged a campaign that Jonathan Farley and the national Green Party supported, but anyway Jonathan Farley was more concerned with the Klan statue, that many other blacks in Tennessee, including lawmakers, also objected to."
This is a great trick, and is what enabled Schoenfeld to call me an "extremist," implying you have to be an extremist to dislike the Confederacy. (If you read Gee's book chapter, you will see he does not criticize the Confederacy or the neo-Confederates: he only criticizes Jonathan Farley. Indeed, Gee calls neo-Confederates "old friends" in the title, and blames *Vanderbilt* for upsetting *them*.)
If it's legitimate to focus on what else I said outside of my essay, then it is more legitimate to focus on what else neo-Confederates have said, particularly their open support of the Klan (by present-day representatives) and slavery. After that's done, then maybe I'll abide by a discussion of what was said in the Waltrip email. As one student says here: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Register/dec09_02/20021209farley.html For
a group of people who had to be written into the Constitution, how
should it make us feel that you say we should not be upset? he said.
The free-speech threshold was crossed when people threatened
[Farleys] life. Were not talking about that; this conversation is in
the wrong direction.