Fighting Against Public Opinion

There is a reason we need laws---public opinion is so fickle and we cannot rely on it to make the correct judgement. an important characteristic of law is anonymity, that is regardless of who commits an action against whom, it is the action that determines whether it is legal, not the identity of the parties involved.

I blogged about the incident of Ben Edelman and the Sichuan Restaurant in my previous blog. As I check the matter this morning, it seemed to got worse than ever. Lots of media outlet reported this, and if they share anything in common, it is these media kept stressing the Harvard identity of Ben and family business nature of the restaurant. This is despicable behavior characteristic of "yellow journalism". In the realm of law, it does not matter whether it is a rich guy fraud a poor man, or a poor man fraud a rich person. It is fraud. The identity of the parties involved is irrelevant. Why the heck does those new media stress the identity so much?

the public likes to think of itself as a grand jury. It is laughable that it think it is capable of doing so when it exhibits such lack of understanding of what justice is. In course, a piece of evidence that is not probative (tend to prove the proposition for which it is proffered) is inadmissible, and the rules of evidence permit it to be excluded from a proceeding. In fact, even relevant evidence could be excluded if it causes unfair prejudice, are misleading, etc. If we look at the public court of this incident. It is close to a farce. Irrelevant evidence is being stressed and people get all excited about them. Sounds like a rogue attorney with a bunch of underqualified jury.

I went to Yelp. And as expected, tons of people went to give raving reviews just to support the restaurant. When I checked, there are 20 reviews created just in response to this incident (I know they are in response to this event because they either mentioned "Edelman" or "Harvard", or both, and are created after 12/9/2014). Of course, all but 1 give 5 start review. Unfortunately, even with the flood of biased reviews, the overall rating of the restaurant is still only 3.5. (I took screenshots).

This really made me suspect the intention of the restaurant owner. First, he broke the law. Instead of abiding by the law and compensate for only 12 dollars, he tried to make up excuses to pay less. Second, he tried to and successfully hijacked the public opinion. This is much more unacceptable for me. I saw too many jerks and nations trying to take the moral high ground to cover up their selfish dealings.

Finally, I want to point out, when it comes to fraud, regardless of the amount, it is always a crime. As I pointed out before, small amounts do add up. Online advertising fraud, always involve much smaller amounts (like 20 cents), add up to millions. In fact, that is what Ben Edelman usually go after. I see nothing inappropriate that he gets upset by similar tactics in the offline world.

Long live true justice. Short live public opinion.