Do You Remember "OrthoMom"?

Orthomom no longer posts regularly - her last one was in June 2008 and then this popped up in May. She once came to my aid when I was attacked by Wonkette and threatened with a lawsuit. (Now that was a story).

Well she "made history" by managing to stave off an attempt to unmask her identity as a result of an incident over some criticism regarding a schoolo board issue.

Working in her favor was that the actual comment was not her's.


Anyway, in a parallel case - but different - I've read:

This story:-

The wild frontier we now know and (mostly) love called the blogosphere is a not-always-okay corral where Free Speech is armed and often dangerous.

The latest showdown is between two women -- a Vogue model and an anonymous blogger -- at odds over what is permissible in the name of free expression. After the blogger called Liskula Cohen a "skank," among other things, the model demanded her identity from the blog host, Google. A New York Supreme Court judge agreed that she was entitled to the information and ordered the company to reveal her name.

Outraged, the blogger, revealed as Rosemary Port, is launching a $15 million lawsuit against Google for disclosing her identity. Google's Andrew Pederson said that while his company sympathizes with victims of cyber-bullying, "We also take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order."

...The model case isn't insignificant, however, and raises weighty questions about privacy, anonymity and the future of e-free speech.

The problem of online defamation is hardly new, but several recent lawsuits have begun challenging the anything-goes modus operandi of the Internet. One of the most famous dates to 2006, when Sue Scheff won a staggering $11.3 million verdict against a woman who had posted hundreds of defamatory comments about Scheff and her company, which counsels the parents of troubled teens...In her new book, "Google Bomb," due for release Sept. 1 and co-authored with attorney John W. Dozier Jr., Scheff tells the story of her lawsuit and offers advice to others similarly defamed online.

"Google bomb" is Internet slang for attempting to raise the ranking of a given page during a Google search. The popularity of a page may not reflect the page's relationship to truth, but it may be popular for other reasons. Let's just say, nasty sells.

There's more there.

Temple Mount & the Five Towns

Even the Five Towns is waking up to the horrific destruction going on at the Temple Mount with an Israeli government in conivvance and with public complacency.

Maybe even OrthoMom will help out?

And by the way, did you know that the archeological finds on the Temple Mount this past month are "secret"?

Here in Hebrew is the news item from the court room when the plaintiffs were eascorted out opf the courtroom while the Antiquities Authortiy personnel exhibited their reports which, they claimed, were secret and here in English is a video interview with Israel Caspi on the subject.

Unbelievable.

OrthoMom Disappoints

OrthoMom disappointed me.

She posted an item about Jews going to Tashlich and getting their automobiles ticketed. But she didn't mention in her post the obvious:

Driving on Yontif?

OM, not even a joke or humorous reference to that oxymoron?

Something like "well, maybe next year for Rosh HaShanna they get to throw their cars in the lake?"

Five Towns Slips into the NYT on a Waterbury Story

In a NYTimes story about the move of Orthodox families into Waterbury, Connecticut, there's a mention of the Five Towns 'troubles' that has taken up almost all the attention of OrthoMom.

on Long Island, secular Jews have recently sparred with their more religious counterparts in the Five Towns.

Yediot's "Orthodox" Woman

Who is this lady?



Her name is Tali Farkash.

She's described as "Ynet's in-house Orthodox girl".

Sort of an Israeli OrthoMom.

Here's her latest story lead-in:-

Two days ago when I went to throw out the garbage (yes, we do throw out our garbage) I saw a very strange sight. One of my very traditional neighbors (of the kind who shave their heads) got out of a car.

So, what’s the big deal? People get out of cars every day. But this woman got out of the “wrong” side of the car, the driver’s side. I blinked twice and pinched myself three times, but the surrealistic sight did not disappear.

When the walking wonder or the driving wonder saw me, she blew the horn, added a wink indicating that this was between us, and went to her apartment. I remained there staring into space, with the garbage bag in hand, feeling the warm engine as proof that this was not a nighttime hallucination…

Though the roads in Bnei Brak are full of stricly Orthodox women drivers, you cannot say that the personal freedom in driving a car comes without a price. Even today, when a stricly Orthodox woman drives, it is seen as an act of rebellion, excessive independence, a “complicated issue of Jewish law”.

Well, now we know that Yedioth is interested in the Orthodox world. Well, sort of.

Overseas Voting - For A School Board Election?

Here's something that should catch the eye of OrthoMom.

Did you know that someone (connected with the OU? aberman@ouisrael.org; and a "Lily") are trying to line up registered voters from the Five Towns area to vote in May school board elections. Wow, this seems to be shping up as a fierce contest.

Here's the ad as it appeared in Torah Tidbits:-



What would Pamela G. say to this? "Yeshivas and seminaries". Tsk, tsk.

But again, that's American democracy. As Ricard Daley Sr. was rumored (but only rumored) to have said: "vote early and vote often".

OrthoMom Makes it Big

No, not her latkes or kugel.

Her anonymous public profile as a result of the lawsuit pressed against her.

The NY Sun has this report:

Secret Blogger Seeks Protection

An Orthodox Jewish blogger is asking a judge to protect her anonymity from a Long Island elected official who has gone to court to identity the blogger.

The elected official, Pamela Greenbaum, a member of the school board for Lawrence, L.I., asked a state judge last month to force Google to identify the writer behind a popular Web log for the orthodox community in the Five Towns area.

The blog, orthomom.blogspot.com, featured a posting in January critical of Ms. Greenbaum's position regarding the use by yeshiva students of public school facilities. In guest comments to the postings, Ms. Greenbaum has been called a "bigot."

A lawyer for the blogger says the speech on the blog is protected by the First Amendment, according to legal papers filed yesterday in state court in Manhattan.

"It doesn't seem to me that a school board member ought to be suing to find out the identity of her critics," the lawyer, Paul Levy of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, said. "Harry Truman said, ‘If you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen,' What ever happened to that?"

Ms. Greenbaum has suggested that she intends to file a defamation lawsuit against either the blogger or commentators on the blog.

Due to this suit, OM has 121,000 results at Google at this moment. Nice for a Jewish girl from the Five Towns (okay, so her neighborhood is a bit upscale). And to think, I was cross-blogging with her when she was just small-time (kidding, OM, just kidding).

Let me know when you hit the New York Times, okay?

P.S. Please come back to this post on others concerning OrthoMom a few times. I am only on the second Google page when you search for "OrthoMom". I'd like a ride on her coat-tails or whatever it's called in female fashion.

Reflecting on OrthMom's Predicament

I have pointed out OrthoMom's predicament in getting involved in a possible legal hassle over a supposed anonymous comment on her blog (seems now not to have been and the litigant is ending up with egg, or omlette, on her face).

I left my comments at her site - about supervisory responsibility - but them I came across
this:-

The hallmark of the flame is precisely what Jett lamented: thoughts expressed while sitting alone at the keyboard would be put more diplomatically — or go unmentioned — face to face.

Flaming has a technical name, the “online disinhibition effect,” which psychologists apply to the many ways people behave with less restraint in cyberspace.

In a 2004 article in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior, John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., suggested that several psychological factors lead to online disinhibition: the anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure. Dr. Suler notes that disinhibition can be either benign — when a shy person feels free to open up online — or toxic, as in flaming.

The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming.

This work points to a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world. In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well. Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy. This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track.

Appropriate, no?

I'm for OrthoMom, Too

I won't write much on this topic of OrthoMom (my preferred spelling) but will simply you point you in all the right directions (after all, this is the MyRightWord blog, right?).

OrthoMom may be sued.

Muqata joins in.

Even grumpy DovBear is excited.

All these sites include other sites and comments so you can spend until Purim reading (like Krum, Canonist and the very latest up to publication at OrthoMom again).

But one comment of my own:

MyRightWord is not an anonymous blog. I've put my face on this, literally and otherwise. Although all you out their in your wisdom have decided not to clog up my site with hundreds of comments (you'd think I never say anything controversial - and I can't believe you all agree with me), I think I did the right thing.

Those who have chosen to go Ploni ben Almoni may run into difficulties.

But dearest OrthoMom, we're right behind you!

Give me Freedom of Speech and Expression or Give Me Less-Than-Death Punishment!