Originally published at Death and Taxes, ed. Brian Abrams, 15 March 2016.
Grateful thanks to the Internet Archive for preserving this work.
On day seven of the Hulk Hogan/Gawker Media trial, Gawker founder Nick Denton was cross-examined in a Florida court by Kenneth Turkel, a lawyer representing Hogan in his lawsuit for invasion of privacy against Denton’s company. Turkel spent over an hour shouting at Denton in a manner so angry and contemptuous that it created something of a furor. Condemnation of Turkel was immediate and vocal, both in the press room where I was parked at the time, and on the popular Twitter hashtag.
“You’re a very intelligent man,” Turkel sneered at the outset, for all the world as if that were an insult — perhaps he meant it as one! — and things went downhill from there.
I’ve got an ear on the #hulkvsgawk trial and this lawyer is getting right on my tits. Shouty moron. pic.twitter.com/nNoQWhkj59
— Carl Greenwood (@carlgreenwood) March 15, 2016
@annamphillips Hulk attorney is very crude this morning. #hulkvsgawk
— NY Justice Seeker (@NYJusticeSeeker) March 15, 2016
Throughout this testimony, the politics of the trial were thrown into glaring relief. Over and over, it was clear that Turkel’s anger and sneering were directed at things that simply wouldn’t bother those possessed of liberal political and social views, or those committed to press freedom, the tiniest bit.
Turkel was furious, for example, about Gawker Stalker, an old feature consisting of a map of Manhattan on which celebrity sightings were published in real time. “Celebrities were upset!” he thundered. (I paraphrase.) Denton allowed mildly that celebrities often get upset about things in the press. He accused Denton of trafficking in stolen property when the company paid $5,000 for a prototype iPhone 4, as yet unreleased, that had been left by accident in a bar in March of 2010.
Denton pointed out that Gawker had returned the phone to Apple once the story had been written.
It was hard on everyone to sit through this interminable, deafening, browbeating interrogation. So it was a positive relief when Turkel asked Denton to read a paragraph aloud. It took me a moment to realize that the paragraph in question was from the Hogan sex tape essay written by A.J. Daulerio. The plaintiff’s attorney had taken care to choose what they thought was the most shameful, embarrassing excerpt from the Daulerio piece: It concerns the blowjob administered by Heather Clem, in the sex tape, to Hogan. Denton began to read.
Now, Denton studied PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at University College, Oxford, as an undergraduate. By this I mean that he was trained at the institution that produced, during the time he attended, the most mellifluous, delicate, beautiful English accent the world has yet produced. So the Nick Denton Blowjob Storytime Hour, brought to you by Hogan attorney Kenneth Turkel, really was a little shocking, and yet one could not help feeling one was in the presence of an enduring cultural artifact coming to life.
The prudes and the prurient trying to punish the liberals, and somehow still failing — because there really is a sad poetry to this blowjob, in Daulerio’s telling, and Denton’s reading:
“You got a rubber? I want you to climb on top of me,” Hulk repeats, but not as sexy as it was the first time, which she didn’t hear. Yes, she does have a rubber. Then we watch Hulk stand up and clumsily attempt to roll a condom on to his erect penis which, even if it has been ravaged by steroids and middle-age, still appears to be the size of a thermos you’d find in a child’s lunchbox. Hulk hurls his massive body on to the canopy bed and the woman climbs on top, finally, and they begin. There is lots of squealing and moaning from her and she says stuff like, “I want to make you cum” and, “Your dick feels so good inside me” — that sort of thing. There is light spanking from Hulk done to show he supports her efforts and is close to orgasming.
“Use your most humanizing tones,” sneers Turkel when he demanded that Denton read aloud. “Read the next sweet, sympathetic paragraph!” he said, before compelling Denton to read a second paragraph, and then a third. Thing is, some of us really can hear those tones, and some of us can’t.
Skip to the 19:20 mark for Denton’s reading:
Livestream Link (Via Web Archive)
