Does The Truth Matter? I May Have Grown Up Believing In A Falsehood...

I mentioned, in my previous posting, how those who had committed egregious errors in judgment in regards to the events of September 11th, 2001, were actually promoted and rewarded in various ways, whereas those who attempted to "do the right thing" were harassed, ostracized, humiliated and eventually removed from their positions of employment.

Has the sentiment "doing what's right" become obsolete?

I want you to read this blog in its entirety. This is a story about a liar who destroyed someone's livelihood, and never looked back.

This is the story of a person who abused the trust of someone who is in danger of losing their livelihood once again, due to their machinations, and those of her lawyer.

Please go to this link, and pre-order her book. If you do not wish to do so, at least go to your local bookstore, and implore that they order this book.

Update: Read the bowel-curdling letter from "Freaky" Frank Frisoli.

Term Limits: It's OUR Decision; Jane Daniel's Suit Against Misha Defonseca Is Thrown Out!

In 1993, New Yorkers overwhelmingly voted for terms limits - two four-year terms for elected officials in New York City. In 1996, New Yorkers voted again to keep term limits, and keep them at just two terms.

No matter how you feel about term limits, one thing is clear: it's OUR decision, not the politicians. If they want to change term limits, it should be done the fair way, by asking the voters’ permission.

But a new bill introduced in the City Council would do just the opposite. The bill would ignore the voters and give politicians a third term (the same politicians who will vote on it).

City Hall needs to hear from you. Sign the petition and make your voice heard:
http://itsourdecision.org/

You can also see where your Council member stands, see a term limits time line, tell a friend, and see who we are.

Thanks for all you do!

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In other news...Jane Daniel's lawsuit against Misha Defonseca is thrown out...because she exceeded the statute of limitations in filing said suit.

What a load of crap.

Amazingly, there most likely is NO statute of limitation in regards to perpetrating a FALSEHOOD.

The Trials And Tribulations Of Jane Daniel

Jane Daniel is the former publisher of Mt. Ivy Press who was sued by Misha Defonseca, the author of Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years - a book that has been revealed to have been a complete fraud.

As earlier indicated, I had heard about this huge injustice earlier in the year, but had not kept up with the further happenings.

I've read the entire blog previously; I am back up to Chapter Eight of the book. I plan to go to her book signing and to have her autograph my copy - I am in full support of Jane, considering the nonsense she's endured: she lost a friend, her inheritance, her book publishing company, and most importantly, her reputation.

All along the way, she was the picture of professionalism. It was through dubious legalities that she was placed in the state of which you are all now witness.

Misha's main defense is that, "She feels Jewish" - well, that's rather interesting...sometimes, when I'm eating braunschweiger, I feel a little German...but does that mean I can write a completely false memoir about a life that didn't occur and make a profit, stealing from others, some in the throes of abject poverty themselves, and not be made to pay for the INJUSTICE?!?

Am I on the wrong track here?

There are some who will say, "Oh...she's suffered enough...the loss of her reputation...the SHAME..."

Do you know what I will say to those who espouse such views?

I will say, "No - it ISN'T enough. She, for all intents and purposes, pressed the button."

What button, you ask?

Here's an excerpt from Bestseller - maybe this will make the point clearer:

My best friend, Vera Lee, was also my next-door neighbor of twenty years. We saw each other or spoke on the phone almost every day. She had listened patiently for hours as I wailed and obsessed endlessly as my marriage collapsed. Her advice: never love anyone more than they love you.

A retired French professor, Vera was eighteen years my senior. She was a bright and flirty conversationalist, a gracious hostess, intelligent, and fun. Friends of mine who met her always commented that she was “charming.” I admired her tremendously. She was my “Auntie Mame.” Whenever I wrote her a note I always signed it, Love, Jane.

I think she considered me an asset, too. She liked to show me off to her friends. We were the glamorous young couple — handsome, rock musician husband, vivacious, bright wife — in the mansion next door. She lived by herself on the other side of a common driveway in a cozy brick cottage that had been the gatekeeper’s quarters.

At the time we bought the big house, we were impecunious hippies who had acquired a bit of extra capital through a fluke business opportunity. When we moved in, all our worldly possessions fit in half the living room. Our friends thought we were crazy. In that era those looming, grand Victorians were called white elephants; nobody wanted them – too much upkeep. Within a few short years they would regain their original status as trophy houses.

My life and Vera’s were densely intertwined. I knew her whole family and circle of friends and she knew mine. She was a necessary fixture at my family’s celebrations. She was always with us on Christmas Eve (she, being Jewish, didn’t celebrate with her family) when we opened presents. She often made her entrance waving a flaming red feather boa and toting a bag of gifts for everyone, my kids included. I would never consider having a party without Vera.

Her lively patter was the Vaseline (her word) that kept any affair running smoothly. To encourage the flow of conversation Vera enjoyed conducting parlor games. She would ask people to pick a single word to describe themselves. It could be one word only. She was surprised that I chose “sensible.” Why didn’t you pick something more flattering? she asked. I don’t remember the word she chose for herself.

Or she’d say: You can be rich or famous. One or the other, not both. Which do you choose? She chose famous. I chose rich. She was surprised. I don’t care to impress strangers, I said, I have two kids to send to college.

Another favorite party question was, “If you could push a magic button and someone, somewhere, would die and a million dollars would materialize in your bank account, and nobody would know what you did — would you do it?” She often played this one with new acquaintances. She was smiling brightly as she asked this rather macabre question and listened intently to the answer. In retrospect I now see this game as an ominous augur.

I'm fairly certain that Vera was taken into Misha's confidence, much as Jane had been, so the story of the Million-Dollar Button should be common knowledge to all parties involved.

Understand - Misha was in complete control of her faculties when she initiated the lawsuits against the aggrieved parties - no one was twisting her arm; she knew that her account of being raised by wolves was a fabrication; yet, the lawsuits went forward, regardless.

Jane, I hope that you recover all that is forthcoming.

Misha...I haven't really any words of hate to you...I do wish, however, when you're sitting alone, someplace, somehow, that you will come to understand that what you did was WRONG.

It was not a matter of survival.

It was a matter of thinking that you were better than all around you, and that their gifts, their homes, their possessions, all were yours to do with as you saw fit.

I hope you'll understand. Maybe then, we can move forward and think about forgiveness.

Battle Over Faked Holocaust Memoir in Massachusetts Court

Battle Over Faked Holocaust Memoir in Mass. Court

Monday, August 25, 2008

AP

BOSTON —
It was a shock to Misha Defonseca's readers this year when she admitted that the best-selling story of her tortured childhood during the Holocaust was false, but her U.S. publisher saw it as an opportunity to undo a stinging, 7-year-old court judgment.

Jane Daniel says she never would have been ordered to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer $32.4 million over her handling of profits from "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" had the jury known the book was filled with lies.

Defonseca never lived with wolves to escape the Nazis, never killed a German soldier in self-defense, never walked 3,000 miles across Europe in search of her parents. Contrary to the book's claims, Defonseca admitted in February that she isn't even Jewish.

Daniel is asking a judge to throw out the verdict; a hearing is set for Thursday in Middlesex Superior Court.

"This is a case where everyone was so enamored and felt so much sympathy for the Holocaust survivor, it just overwhelmed everyone in the case, including the jury," Daniel said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Now to find out that the book was not true, that is fraud on the court."

Defonseca and her ghost writer, Vera Lee, said the truth of the 1997 book had no bearing on the jury's finding that Daniel cheated them out of profits.

"It has nothing to do with that," said Defonseca, 71, of Dudley.

"This credibility issue is something Jane is digging up now," Lee said. "That's not what the trial was about. It was about the fact that she cheated us."

Daniel met Defonseca in the 1990s while Daniel was doing publicity for a video company that had made a memorial video for Defonseca about her dog. "She said the reason she was so attached to dogs is because she had been so attached to wolves," Daniel recalled. Once she heard Defonseca tell her whole story, she asked her to write a book.

The harrowing tale of a little Jewish girl's survival became a best-seller in Europe, was translated into 18 languages, was turned into a feature film in France, and drew interest from the Walt Disney Co. and Oprah Winfrey.

But the book sold only 5,000 copies in the United States after Daniel had a falling out with Defonseca and Lee.

The two sued Daniel for breach of contract. In 2001, a Middlesex District Court jury found that Daniel had failed to promote the book as promised and had hidden profits. The jury awarded Defonseca $7.5 million and Lee $3.3 million, but those amounts were later tripled by a judge who found Daniel and her small publishing company, Mt. Ivy Press, had misled both women and tried to claim royalties herself by rewriting the book.

In a brief telephone interview, Defonseca would not discuss her admission that she made up most of the details of the book. In February she acknowledged that her book was a fantasy that she kept repeating.

"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement released by her lawyers.

Defonseca admitted the book was not true after a genealogical researcher working with Daniel on her own book about the case uncovered inconsistencies in her story, including records that showed Defonseca was baptized Catholic and had attended an elementary school in Schaarbeek, Belgium, in 1943, during a time in which she said in her book she was living with wolves in Ukraine.

Daniel's lawyers are asking a judge to overturn the jury's award because Defonseca "perpetrated a hoax" on Daniel, her publishing company, the public, the trial judge and a state appeals court that upheld the verdict. They said Defonseca directly violated a provision in her publishing contract with Daniel in which she affirmed that the content of the book was true.

"From the outset, she breached her contract, but nobody knew it until much later," said Brian McCormick, one of Daniel's lawyers.

Lee's attorney Frank Frisoli said too much time has gone by for Daniel to challenge the verdict now. Also, after the judgment, Daniel reached agreements with both Lee and Defonseca to settle with Daniel for far less than $32.4 million. Daniel said her father paid $425,000 to Defonseca, while Lee received $250,000 from a settlement Daniel received after suing her literary agent and has the right to sell her house in Gloucester.

Lee said that she warned Daniel several times during the writing of the book that some aspects of Defonseca's story were incredible, but that Daniel dismissed her concerns.

"I think she went along thinking she had a blockbuster and she didn't want to hear anything about it not possibly being true," Lee said.

When news of the hoax came out in February, however, Lee said that she had always believed Defonseca's stories and that and no research she did gave her a reason to do otherwise.

"She always maintained that this was truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that that was the case," Lee said then.

Daniel has said she could not fully research Defonseca's story before it was published because the woman claimed she did not know her parents' names, her birthday or where she was born.

Daniel acknowledges she had doubts about portions of Defonseca's story, but said she believed it after talking to Holocaust survivors.

"If you read a lot of Holocaust literature, all survivor stories are miraculous," she said.

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Please.

Just go ahead and read Jane Daniel's blog detailing the whole mess...and then tell me that either Misha or Vera have a leg to stand on.