County Council member threatens to sue local paper for using his name without his permission

What started as a strange local story has gone national, after a County Council member in Frederick County, Maryland, threatened to sue the local paper, the Frederick News-Post, for using his name in a story without first getting his permission.

Councilmen Kirby Delauter posted on Facebook (via The Washington Post): Shame on Bethany Rodgers for an unauthorized use of my name and my reference in her article today. She contacted me by phone yesterday. I did not return her call and did not authorize any use of my name or reference in her article. I had let her know after her hit piece during the election where she embellished, twisted and downright lied about what we discussed for that article that she was to never contact me again since she had absolutely no morals or journalistic ability. . . . So let me be clear, do not contact me and do not use my name or reference me in an unauthorized form in the future.

The Frederick News-Post responded with a tongue-in-cheek editorial (the first letter of each paragraph spells out the councilman's name) defending its First Amendment rights to write about local political figures.

The editorial board wrote:

Knowing Councilman Kirby Delauter as we do, we weren't surprised that he threatened The Frederick News-Post with a lawsuit because we had, he says—and we're not making this up—been putting Kirby Delauter's name in the paper without Kirby Delauter’s authorization. Attorneys would be called, Kirby Delauter said.

In fact, we spent quite some time laughing about it. Kirby Delauter, an elected official; Kirby Delauter, a public figure? Surely, Kirby Delauter can't be serious? Kirby Delauter’s making a joke, right?

Round about then, we wondered, if it’s not a joke, how should we now refer to Kirby Delauter if we can't use his name (Kirby Delauter)? Could we get away with an entire editorial of nothing but “Kirby Delauter” repeated over and over again—Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter? OK, imagine we agreed because of temporary madness or something funny in the water that week, how would we reference "Kirby Delauter" and do our job as journalists without running afoul of our lack of authorization?

That's why we're taking his threat with a pinch of salt. We've seen this behavior before (not just from Kirby Delauter), and it’s worth highlighting again. Bullying seems to be the only way Kirby "Don't say my name" Delauter feels he can lead. Only now, the target is not the public at hearings or occasional "punk" staff member, an arrogant, self-serving, whining middle school teacher or fellow "moron" commissioner, it's The News-Post. Instead of taking his job seriously like the voters demanded and the rest of the council seem to grasp, he's grabbing at distractionary shoot-the-messenger tactics that make a lot of noise but, to quote Shakespeare, a man who knew drama when he saw it, noise that "signifies nothing." Frederick County has big issues to tackle in 2015, and we have yet to hear Kirby Delauter sound out one single, sensible idea. He used the word "govern" in his slogan. Maybe he should apply that to his temper first.