JOHN THE
OBSCURE ™
©
2010
Editorial
Comments [Is that the best title you could come up with?]
Coincidence does not equal significance, so I’m not sure what to make of the fact that I recently came across two instances of editorial comments fossilized within published works where they clearly were not supposed to be retained. [That is not true. You have an inkling that this is relatively common in this digital era when everyone is an amateur publisher making professional-looking amateur mistakes, the same way that web page design wrecked a century of sensible layout principles like a 2-year-old melting crayons on a radiator.] I will merely report them.
The first was in the latest issue of the “Massachusetts Law Review”:
…Further privacy protections by way of privilege or evidence disqualification are found in the common law and in state statutes relating to attorney-client communications, marital and parent- child communications, clergy communications, mediation, medical examinations and communications, and in limitations on discovery obtainable from the Commonwealth in rape cases. Absence of the privileges can lead to abstention from recourse to the justice system and substitution of self-help remedies to abate grievances or for retribution. [I do not understand this point. For example the spousal privilege, when asserted, keeps the witness spouse from being compelled to testify. In other words, that witness is not available for trial. How would removing that privilege “lead to abstention from recourse from the justice system”?]….1
The objection of this devil sitting on the author’s shoulder, as it were, is answered in a footnote presumably elaborated after seeing this comment. But the footnote, too, has retained an editorial comment:
…The term ‘privilege’ is used loosely in this instance. The statute bars compulsion of the spouse’s or a child’s testimony, i.e., makes such witnesses unavailable. A husband or wife might hesitate to seek court or police aid absent such protection against compelled spouse or child testimony. [This is an incorrect statement of the law. I suggest simply deleting it rather than explain the difference between spousal privileges which can be waived, and spousal communications that cannot be waived.]
I suggest deleting editorial comments before an article is published, or better still, asking such questions in a separate document. In any case, it appears that the author either never satisfied the editor, or the incorrect version of the entire piece was published.
We would expect less from a cell phone manual than from a law review, but editorial notes are a great leveler. The manual for LG’s new Rumor Touch is almost plaintive rather than pushy in describing the phone’s “My Stuff” folder: “This folder contains all applications, games, ringtones, wallpapers, and ringback tones. Need some one to provide proper verbiage.”2
Indeed. [And to delete it as well.]
1 “Secrets of Governments, Enterprises and Individuals Affecting Access to
Justice” by Jerry Cohen in “Massachusetts Law Review,” June 2010, Vol. 93, No.
1, p. 226. The article also elsewhere retains a smaller editorial question:
“…participation [in what] by thirty eight state and local Information Fusion
Centers….”
2 Online at www.virginmobileusa.com/resources/phones/prepaid/manual/lg-rumor-touch.pdf. The error is on p. 37. Incidentally, while LG failed to delete this verbiage from its manual, it did manage to delete the entire manual, and any reference to its existence, from the actual phone’s packaging. Puzzling how the heck to install the battery, I googled up this manual.
Posted Aug. 22, 2010.