It honestly amazes me how some people are incapable of empathizing with the plight of others until the very same situation happens to them or someone they personal care about. And even then...
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Alton Parker wrote that a legal right of privacy didn’t exist, that Roberson’s physical property hadn’t been stolen, that her reputation wasn’t damaged, and that her distress was purely mental, so she didn’t have a valid case.
Parker didn’t understand that a young girl could be distraught at untoward attention—saying she should be flattered—but in her own shoes, he found he didn’t in fact, appreciate “the compliment implied” by the paparazzi taking photographs of him.
In a beautiful bit of irony, the judge who ruled against Roberson, Chief Justice Alton Parker, suddenly developed a desire for privacy two years after he ruled it didn’t legally exist. In 1904 he ran for president as the Democratic nominee against Theodore Roosevelt. During his campaign, he complained that paparazzi wouldn’t leave him and his family alone. “I reserve the right to put my hand in my pockets, and to assume comfortable attitudes without having to be everlastingly afraid that I shall be snapped by some fellow with a camera,” he wrote in a press release. Abigail Roberson responded to Parker in an open letter published on the front page of The New York Times on July 27, 1904.
“I take this opportunity to remind you that you have no such right as that which you assert,” the then 21-year-old Roberson wrote cheekily. “I have very high authority for my statement, being nothing less than a decision of the Court of Appeals in this State, in which you wrote the prevailing opinion.”
It honestly amazes me how some people are incapable of empathizing with the plight of others until the very same situation happens to them or someone they personal care about. And even then sometimes they still can't reconcile the similarities so have to rationalize how their plight is somehow different or "special". At least Justice Parker got a taste of his own medicine and some comeuppance.
He ended up losing the election to Roosevelt in a landslide.
It honestly amazes me how some people are incapable of empathizing with the plight of others until the very same situation happens to them or someone they personal care about. And even then sometimes they still can't reconcile the similarities so have to rationalize how their plight is somehow different or "special". At least Justice Parker got a taste of his own medicine and some comeuppance.