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Just a little bit famous
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When it comes to commenting on people, legally it makes a great deal of difference if the person is private or public. A public person is a famous (or newsworthy) person.
Now, we can all look at President Obama, Kobe Bryant, or Tom Cruise and see without question that these men are public figures. They are all purpose public figures and everything they do, including how they treat their family or friends is open to public scrutiny. They are open to this kind of discussion because they enjoy pervasive fame and notoriety if not pervasive power and influence.
But what about those who are just a little bit famous? Or those who are famous because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught up in some controversial event?
Andy Warhol said that everybody gets to be famous for fifteen minutes. If you get your fifteen minutes of fame do you become a public figure forever? Once you are a public figure, do you ever get to be a private person again or do you live the rest of your life inches from the spotlight. (Hey didn’t you use to be . . . ?)
Well, the law has tried to tackle this problem by designating some people as “limited public figures.” In fact most people who dance with fame are limited public figures. One way they get there by voluntarily thrusting themselves into a controversy and attempting to influence it’s outcome. Limited public figures are often ordinary people, such as a scientist who takes a leadership role in pesticide control or an attorney who put himself in the spotlight when representing a school board on a controversial subject. They are only public figures for media coverage or comment as to the particular newsworthy controversy they happen to be involved with. Otherwise, comments about them are subject to the laws of defamation.
However, inside the limited area of their fame, they are public figures. Forever. In a famous case, a woman entertainer, Anita Wood Brewer, once had a relationship with the eternally famous Elvis Presley. Several years after she had retired to private life, an article appeared in a newspaper concerning a reunion between Elvis and her. There was no reunion and considering that she had been married in the meantime, she thought the article defamatory. But once Anita had become a public figure, even if a very limited, flash-in-the-pan type of public figure, she always would be public figure--at least in terms of being Elvis No. 1 girl in the 50s.
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