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May
31, 2003
The Price of Tides
Streisand
Environmental Hypocrite
By CHRIS CLARKE
In the on-stage preamble to his song "Love
Me, I'm A Liberal," the late Phil Ochs used to describe
the classic liberal as "ten degrees to the left of center
when times are good; ten degrees to the right of center if it
affects them personally."
Classic liberal Barbra Streisand seems
to be offering an update to the line. When a cause affects her
personally, she's fifty million dollars to the right of center.
That's how much Streisand is demanding
in a new lawsuit against the California Coastal Records Project,
brainchild of environmental activists Kenneth and Gabrielle Adelman,
whose California
coastline website contains over 12,000 frames of the California
coast shot since 2002. Streisand is also suing layer42.net, the
Adelmans' ISP, and pictopia.com, a firm that sells high-quality
prints of photos on the site.
The Adelmans, retired dot-commers formerly
known for owning the largest solar electric installation in the
state, have provided an absolutely invaluable resource for coastal
protection activists. Shot by Ken from a helicopter flown by
Gabrielle, the photos cover every inch of the California coastline
other than for a few miles along the Vandenberg Air Force Base
near Point Conception. The website displays the photos in an
accessible, easy to search database: grassroots activists have
already used the site to stop construction of illegal seawalls,
track changes since historic photos were taken, and promote the
natural beauty of our delicate coast. It's one of the most innovative
environmental projects ever to hit the Web, and the Adelmans
offer it to the world for free.
Enter Yentl. One of those 12,000 shots
of the California coast, visible here, frames her garish Point
Dume estate--looking for all the world like a handful of Nantucket
crackerbox houses stapled together by a drunken contractor--at
a distant enough remove that her poolside chaises longue occupy
about twelve pixels each. She's claiming that the photo, one
of dozens available on the web, invades her privacy, and that
the rough map available on the site will encourage stalkers,
who presumably have missed until now all the mentions of her
address on the web, some of them with explicit directions to
the estate at the end of Wildlife Road in the hoity toity Mahou
Riviera section of Malibu.
It is probably beside the point to suggest
this diva get over herself. We're talking, after all, about someone
whose biography on her personal website runs 3261 words sprawled
across four pages. (By contrast, the official biography of United
Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, arguably the most important
person in the world, runs one page and 1082 words.) This is not
a woman who got where she is by having an insufficient sense
of self-importance.
But it does seem she's gotten some bad
advice along the way. For one thing, her suit over the photo
might be construed as making the photo's republication on journalistic
and diswcussion websites permissible under fair use doctrine.
If she succeeds and has the photo pulled down, it's a safe bet
a hundred mirror sites will pop up that day. That photo is out
and in the world now, and Streisand may as well get used to it.
More ominously, if Streisand successfully
gets her photo yanked from the Adelmans' site, a precedent will
have been set. Every homeowners' association that wants to riprap
their beachfront, every rancher who'd rather not control runoff
from his eroding fields, every used car dealer along Highway
One will be able to launch privacy suits to shield their activities
from public view.
Faultline contributor Mark Massara, the
director of the Sierra Club's Coastal program, is blunt. "It
is inconceivable to me that someone who proclaims herself an
environmentalist would threaten to dismantle one of the greatest
high tech projects to protect the California coast in all time
just because they chose to place their backyard on a coastal
bluff. At some point, someone needs to sit her down and tell
her the public interest is at stake here."
I wish I thought that would help. Malibu's
upper crust is well known for personifying Phil Ochs' characterization.
Streisand's neighbor and liberal Democrat David Geffen led the
rich folks' reaction to unfettered public access to the town's
public beaches; the town's beachfront denizens led the recent
campaign to oust environmentalist Coastal Commission Chairwoman
Sara Wan when the fight over the town's coastal plan became too
contentious.
Streisand's suit is frivolous, says Ken
Adelman. I'm not a lawyer, but I tend to agree. It looks groundless
enough that it may well be thrown out of court, eventually. But
the damage will be done. Fortunately, the Adelmans are better
off than the average environmentalist web publisher, but wouldn't
it be better to spend those legal fees on something to benefit
the planet, maybe? Some liberal. Some environmentalist. Yentl
the yeshiva boy would have had the Yiddish readily at hand to
describe Streisand the litigant: "Blufferke." Hypocrite.
Chris Clarke is
the editor of Faultline:
the magazine of the California environment. He can be
reached at: cclarke@faultline.org
Today's
Features
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
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