Ever hear of Clarence Darrow? You have if you’ve ever heard of the “Monkey Trial” of 1925 in Tennessee, which pitted him against William Jennings Bryan.

But I’m not referring to that here. For that matter, ever hear of Robert Servatius or Dieter Wechtenbruch? History now has an additional name to add to the ranks of these gentlemen, namely Geir Lippestad.

To żona namówiła go, by podjął się obrony Breivika. Kim jest Geir Lippestad?: Geir Lippestad podjął się ostatecz… http://t.co/6U02M8o1

April 28, 2012 5:52 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@polskathetimes

Polska The Times

Kim jest Geir Lippestad? “Who is Geir Lippestad?” we see in the Polska headline. Well, before he took on Bryan, Clarence Darrow was famous for accepting legal clients that no one else would touch, such as a pair of teenagers (Leopold and Loeb) accused in 1924 of a sensational murder; Servatius and Wechtenbruch were the defense lawyers for Adolph Eichmann, the key Nazi in the Holocaust who was brought to trial – and executed – in Israel in 1962. For his part, Geir Lippestad has taken up the defence of (alleged) Norwegian mass-killer Anders Breivik at his current trial. (And if you click through, that is him as the second head from the left in the photo up top. Please don’t mistake him with Breivik, the most-rightward figure.)

To be clear, then, these are all admirable characters. Yes, including Lippestad – even though that Oslo legal proceeding has mainly been about Breivik defiantly confirming his guilt and, in effect, mocking the Norwegian state for lacking the death penalty within its arsenal of criminal penalties. Because someone had to function as legal counsel for Eichmann, etc. and similarly someone needs to be there doing the same for Breivik, as odious as he may be. Because that is the mark of a society with the rule of law, that practices true justice, namely that the defendant is offered the maximum opportunity to put forward his side of the story, just to be sure that society’s sanctions (fines, imprisonment, execution in certain other states) are not applied by some horrible mistake to what is actually an innocent man. (As usual with this blog, “his,” “man” and the like are intended to be generic and apply to both genders.)

Further, it is not as if Lippestad is merely some court-appointed lawyer who happened to be in the wrong place in line at the wrong time when the judge had to designate someone to work with Breivik. No, he took the case voluntarily. Or rather (to give credit to where it is really due), his wife had him take the case. That’s even in the first part of the Polish tweet, that his wife persuaded him to step forth, “because democracy demands it.”

Now, this is Norway – pretty decent folk – but that still has not stopped Lippestad having to take up police protection because of all the various threats to his life that he has received for the services he is providing to Breivik. One would expect that all of that is just an ugly patch, and that he will be able to resume his former life with no penalty once his client is dispatched to the harshest sentence that Norwegian jurisprudence is allowed to impose – I suppose life imprisonment. (After all, there has been no attempt by him to deny or even mitigate his guilt in setting off that tremendous car-bomb in Oslo last July, and then shooting down all those young people afterwards on that island.) Still, Polska writer David Charter* does provide a useful service by taking the spotlight off the accused for a little bit to consider other players caught in their own poignant situations by the awfulness of this crime.

* A curiously non-Polish name! Is this piece actually taken (and translated) from some other publication? I find no indication that it is.

Annals of Tone-Deaf Advertising – Check out what “Polska The Times” has dug up:

Auschwitz w reklamie… klubu fitness. “Obóz koncentracyjny dla kalorii”: Zdjęcie torów prowadzących do obozu ko… http://t.co/4f4aQBhV

January 7, 2012 9:33 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@polskathetimes

Polska The Times

OK, maybe you don’t know Polish, but nonetheless you can see the “Auschwitz” there . . . and the word “fitness” . . .

A rather strange combination, no? Well, the payoff is really the Polska article linked to here, to which I would encourage you to click through since it shows the poster in question for a recent advertising campaign undertaken by a fitness-place called The Circuit Factory: a long, low shot of a railroad track leading to a bleak building (with the label “Auschwitz” off to the left, in case there is any confusion), and the catch-phrase below “Kiss Your Calories Goodbye.”

Let me hasten to add that this “Circuit Factory” place is by no means Polish – it’s apparently to be found in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. In his response to initial press inquiries, though, its owner – one Phil Parkinson – tried to explain the campaign as an effort to demonstrate that his club was “a concentration camp for calories.” Somehow that seemed to contribute nothing further at all towards stemming the waves of opprobrium that headed his way via the Internets and social media.

Then again, on-line there is no such thing as bad publicity. The Polska article ends by citing comments Parkinson made to the Arabian Business website about how beneficial the Auschwitz campaign has been for his firm’s Google/Facebook/YouTube results – “and we have had about five times as many enquiries [presumably about club membership] as before.”