First of all, I would like to address these claims made against my potential client in a hypothetical manner, just to make discussing the issue as clear as possible for people reading this statement, and to keep this statement free of disclaimers and cluttering statements of clarification. To this end, any references to “my client” from this point forward shall refer to Mr. Ankiel (who has not yet acquired my services, but may I say my hourly rates are quite reasonable, as you might be able to glean from my numerous televlsion spots, and my conviction rate is astonishing, and I hope to be accredited in Missouri sometime within the next calendar year).
According to the official Major League Baseball website (if their claim to official status, or “officialness,” is to be believed), my client, in 2004, purchased a years’ worth of Human Growth Hormone from Signature Pharmacy in Orlando, FL. At the time, my client was a pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, recovering from shoulder surgery and, according to reports, had a prescription for these drugs, which is needed when procuring drugs banned by the United States Congress. In addition, at the time of the purchase, there were no bans in place in Major League Baseball to restrict the use of HGH. As a result, my client has rightfully not been charged with any crime, because he is guilty of nothing that any other athlete in his position would undergo to return to the peak of his profession as quickly as possible.
However, there is the matter of libelous slander (or slanderous libel) being proferred by irresponsible journalists, such as Yahoo! Sports columnist Jeff Passan. In his latest column dated September 7, 2007 (titled “Ankiel’s feel-good story doesn’t feel right anymore”), Passan asserts that this innocent incident in 2004 paints my client’s run of success this past month in an unflattering, scandalous light. While the court of public opinion might thrive on the notion that those in the public eye are guilty until proven innocent, I am almost sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the actual American court system doesn’t work in such a way.
As a matter of fact, there is no proof that my client’s purchase of HGH in 2004 has anything to do with his 2007 performance. People are free to speculate that my client has more track marks in his buttocks than Meg Ryan has in her lips, but people are also free to believe in Santa Claus and no-fee checking accounts, as long as they don’t voice such beliefs in a way as to impugn the credibility of someone I hope to represent in a lucrative legal action. Mr. Passan writing such an irresponsible piece of speculative tripe is tantamount to Mr. Passan visiting my client’s place of residence and assaulting his orifices with any number of rusty blunt implements. Not only has my client’s reputation been assailed, but his psyche has been damaged beyond repair. Perhaps there are some precedents that protect Mr. Passan’s right to “lie through his teeth” (as grade-school children are apt to say), but I would like to see such precedents withstand the scrutiny they deserve in front of a jury (or a judge, if the case goes that way).
The same holds true for my client’s General Manager, Walt Jocketty. In a statement regarding the news about my client’s 2004 dealings, Mr. Jocketty claims that the incident is “…very tragic, along with everything else we’ve had happen to us this year.” Let me make myself perfectly clear. The World Trade Center collapsing was a tragedy. What happened to Leona Helmsley’s grandchildren was a tragedy. Marisa Tomei winning the Oscar for My Cousin Vinny was a tragedy. Using prescription drugs is not a tragedy. To lump in my client’s above-the-board transaction with two DUIs, a deserved death, and a repugnant drug addict, is the sort of guilt-by-association that I hoped went the way of Yellow Journalism and Nazi Germany. Alas, Mr. Jocketty is guilty of the same willful ignorance that Mr. Passan and his columnist cabal is guilty of – not knowing when to keep their big mouths shut.
My future client and I will see you in court, gentlemen.
Terrence R. Hammersmith, Esq., is a proud member of the American Lawyers Association of the United States of America, and a founder of Hammersmith, Grinchfibbins, & Loller, LLC.
The “lawyer” in the picture is a pretty well known Oracle consultant btw:
http://www.dba-oracle.com/
Shitty Neighborhood Rallies Against Asshole Developer
CHICAGO—Residents of the Carney Gardens neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side are opposing an effort by asshole real-estate developer Royce Messner to build a godawful $45 million strip mall and condominium complex in the crime-ridden shithole they call home.
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Residents march to protect their beloved, execrable squalor.
The Save Carney Neighborhood Foundation, the most organized non-criminal group in this part of town, has filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the scheduled April 2008 groundbreaking. While halting the project would surely prevent a tragic urban-planning nightmare, it would also mean keeping the run-down, economically depressed community exactly as it is.
“Carney is where I was born and raised, and it remains a tight-knit community,” said Foundation chairman Althea Hynes at a fundraising block party held Monday on a broken bottle- and condom-strewn stretch of Carney Avenue where the money-grubbing Messner wants to put a soulless indoor food court. “Lots of young kids still play in the empty lots around here.”
Messner, 54, a three-time Chicagoland “Builder of the Year” and all-time unbelievable scumbag who made his fortune in the 1990s converting public parks and cheap, blighted properties into high-rise luxury residences, is seeking to “revitalize” Carney Gardens by razing it and replacing it with a damned cookie-cutter mixed commercial-residential development that would benefit no one who lives there now.
Unrepentant prick Messner.
“What people like this can never get through their heads is the fact that progress isn’t always painless,” the rapacious bastard said, as if he were not talking about driving thousands of poor benighted fucks out of the place that, pestilential hellhole or not, is the only home they’ve ever been able to afford. “They complained about the expressway over their heads too, but its easy-on, easy-off access makes Carney Gardens a prime area for development. Once we get a few more chain restaurants in that area, the whole economy will turn around.”
A hellish 16-block stretch of burned-out buildings and howling poverty, Carney Gardens has never recovered from its economic slide in the late 1960s. However, many of those who live in the human sewer say they can’t just allow Messner to squat his bloated fat-cat ass over their neighborhood and dump a big concrete-and-glass yuppie turd onto everything they’ve ever known.
“There’s no way this city can allow some developer to just come in here and ruin our community,” said liquor store owner Carlos Jimenez, demonstrating willful ignorance of Chicago history, the conditions immediately outside his door, and even his role in Carney Gardens’ downfall.
“Where are all these people supposed to go if they put up that mall here—Gary, Indiana?” said Hynes, as if living in a filthy, dangerous joke of a city was some kind of affront to her standards.
Urban planning experts say that any opposition to the colossal asshole faces an uphill battle, as Carney Gardens has been a wart on the ass of Chicago for too long. Despite this, it seems that the determined Save Carney group will not abandon its hope of rejecting the only development proposal their hopeless pit will see in the next two decades.
“Poor communities are at a disadvantage against this type of developer, who speaks the language of City Hall,” said Jackson Eisenberg, an architecture professor at Loyola University who has studied the effects of short-sighted, profit-oriented renewal and gentrification on dozens of crap areas. “It’s the same dilemma faced by the working-class [losers] in [rotten-ass] urban neighborhoods across America. As a [shrivel-dicked] businessman looking for a lucrative investment, [evil] Messner sees a ripe opportunity here.”
Mayor Richard M. Daley has yet to speak publicly about whether he will oppose Messner’s human hamster cage, or allow the vile prick to wipe the bleeding wound that is Carney Gardens from existence.