Celebrity gift party operator threatens blogger who wrote about it

Gawker's Hamilton Nolan was invited to and attended one of those pre-Oscar parties where celebrities are loaded with luxury gifts. Subsequently, Secret Room Events, the "product placement" outfit concerned, threatened him with a lawsuit for having written about it.

It has come to our attention the Hamilton Nolan has written a very unessessary and hateful article slandering our name and Gawker had released it. This negative article affects our business name greatly. What was written is not true in any way.

Hamilton also named some of our sponsors and slandered them as well. These sponsors also are going to take action as well.

I suggest you remove the article asap. We have contacted our attorney to deal with this. Trust me. I will not let down until this is resolved.

Amy Boatwright
Secret Room Events

Pro tip to debutantes at the Streisand Effect ball: know what "slander" is before threatening the Hamilton Nolan over it. Also, spellcheck!

• [nixiebunny]

  It’s safe to assume that they don’t *have* a lawyer, as Gawker would have heard from their lawyer if they were serious.

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    What’s even better than getting a “Do this or our lawyer will make you do it” letter is getting an “I am a lawyer” letter.

    What’s even better than that is a letter from someone pretending to be their own lawyer, but whose signed name occasionally and mysteriously changes as the correspondence continues.

  • [lesserlesserwashington]

    As a lawyer…we were taught this is taxable income.  On the market price.  So they better be showing these to their accountants or they’ll have the IRS to answer to.

• [TokenFrenchDude]

  “Secret Room Events” sounds so gay.
    Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

• [Noctilucent Studios]

  Doesn’t she know the internet LIVES for exactly this kind of thing??

  Edit: I just read the linked article. Apparently she doesn’t know.

  • [not a doktor]

    I love net-naive people making these kinds of mistakes. It’s like the comedy archetype where a “city folk” makes an as of themselves in the country.

    But everybody’s more urbane.

    • [scatterfingers]

      All of Hollywood seems oddly Amish when it comes to using the internet.

    • [wolfwitch]

      They live in their own little world in that part of the country…

• [angusm]

  “Slander? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

  Having been on the receiving end of a few amateurishly-written would-be cease-and-desists, I now believe that there’s an inverse relationship between the probability of someone using the words “slander”, “libel” or “defamation” and the probability that they actually know the technical meaning of those terms.

  Here’s a hint for y’all: “slander” != “you said something I didn’t like”

  • [nixiebunny]

     Whereas libel != “you wrote something I didn’t like”, which would have been the proper word to misuse in this case.

  • [Thad Boyd]

     I thought slander was when you took photographs without permission.  That’s not slander?

    • [agreenster]

      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=slander

    • [not a doktor]

      I thought it was where you got poop on the wall of the outhouse.

• [Mordicai]

  WHAT DOES SHE THINK THIS IS, ENGLAND?*

  *on account of the really psychotic defamation laws across the pond, I mean.

• [Sekino]

  No wonder she’s in Hollywood, she can’t fucking write.

• [Jonathan_Harford]

  To be fair, the article _is_ both unessessary and hateful.

  • [Guido]

    To be fair, you are not in charge of what is necessary or not. 

    • [Jonathan_Harford]

      No, but I am in charge of what is essessary.

      AND THIS IS NOT THAT, I ASSURE YOU.

      • [Guido]

        Pwned.

  • [waetherman]

    …and tiresome.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    To be fair, the article _is_ both unessessary and hateful.

    That’s libeluss!

• [Nigel Humphries]

  “Trust me, I will not I will not let down until this is resolved.”

  Either she is not aware the expression is “let up” or she has a lot of hems to adjust.

  • [Ronald Pottol]

    No, she’s breast feeding, and you are STARVING HER BABY by not complying. (let down being the term for starting to release the milk (probably not quite right on that, now that I really think about it, but close enough)).

    ;-)

    • [Teal]

       Are you saying she’s milking this for all its worth?

• [BrotherPower]

  One positive takeaway:

  I read this yesterday with the recent Jesse Thorn item fresh in my mind, and my first thought (well, third, after “Ha” and “Ha”) was, “Wow, if this unstable illiterate can build a successful company, I truly have no excuse for not making my thing.”

• [syncrotic]

  Meh: it’s just celebrities being given high-margin retail items that are, ultimately, fairly worthless. I’d envy them, but all they’re getting for free here are $200 worth of goods and $20,000 worth of retail markup.

  Maybe there’s something offensive about giving free goods to someone who already has everything they could possibly want, but this is just a particularly egregious corner-case example of what goes on at all levels of society.

  Got money? We’ll turn it into more money, and our success will be proportional to how much you already have. The more money you make, the more opportunities you’ll have to defer and avoid taxes. Are you unemployed? You’re unemployable. Are you sick? You’re uninsurable.

  Those are real problems. Not a real problem: celebrities getting free merchandise from a bunch of sycophantic losers desperate to buy name recognition for their worthless brands. I’ll grant you that it’s pretty funny though.

• [CygnusXII]

  I read the articles that were written, and they didn’t seem all that bad to me. I felt he decried the whole process, and was very vague as to people and what not. I cannot see what the fuss is about, unless they are scared of the back lash on the whole practice itself and are scared for their relevance as an service. He could really laid it on thick about the juxtaposition of the economy and the indifference’s of the participants and the industry itself, but that is already a given. We all know of the disconnect between Hollywood, Celebs and reality. Much a do about nothing if you ask me. I’ve heard a few of the celebs donate their swag to Charities, and use it also to rewards their assistants and what not. I do not know if that is true. It would be nice to see that happen, and be publicized.

• [lesserlesserwashington]

  The great thing about these gifts are that they are taxable income.  Product placement is creating tax cheats of all our celebrities.  Just ask the IRS…or Wesley Snipes.

• [Marky]

  I saw the Gawker article and thought it was the dumbest thing I”d read.

  I was wrong.

  Amy, you win.

• [Bonobo]

  Adam Carolla complained about (I assume) the same gifting suite on his podcast for half an hour. I doubt they are going after him.

• [That_Anonymous_Coward]

  So they invited someone from Gawker to come to their event. 
  Were they a little to lazy to look and see what it is Gawker does?
  Or is this one of those, any PR is good PR things?
  Maybe hiring Paul Christoforo was a bad idea?

  Seems about as bright as sending your child to the Mengele Day Care Center.

• [Joe Simmons]

  I wondered what the native language of “Ms. Boatwright” is – but watched a clip on youtube of her…and she appears to be a native speaker of English. The use of  “also…as well” twice in a row is hilarious.