Luther Haynes and Dorothy Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated, and Nicholas Lemann

Luther Haynes and his wife, Dorothy Haynes née Johnson, appeal from the dismissal on the defendants’ motion for summary judgment of their suit against Nicholas Lemann, the author of a highly praised, bestselling book of social and political history called The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1991), and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the book’s publisher. The plaintiffs claim that the book libels Luther Haynes and invades both plaintiffs’ right of privacy. Federal jurisdiction is based on diversity, and the common law of Illinois is agreed to govern the substantive issues. The appeal presents difficult issues at the intersection of tort law and freedom of the press.

Between 1940 and 1970, five million blacks moved from impoverished rural areas in the South to the cities of the North in search of a better life. Some found it, and after sojourns of shorter or greater length in the poor black districts of the cities moved to middle-class areas. Others, despite the ballyhooed efforts of the federal government, particularly between 1964 and 1972, to erase poverty and racial discrimination, remained mired in what has come to be called the “urban ghetto.” The Promised Land is a history of the migration. It is not history as a professional historian, a demographer, or a social scientist would write it. Lemann is none of these. He is a journalist and has written a journalistic history, in which the focus is on individuals whether powerful or representative. In the former group are the politicians who invented, executed, or exploited the “Great Society” programs. In the latter are a handful of the actual migrants. Foremost among these is Ruby Lee Daniels. Her story is the spine of the book. We are introduced to her on page 7; we take leave of her on page 346, within a few pages of the end of the text of the book.

When we meet her, it is the early 1940s and she is a young woman picking cotton on a plantation in Clarksdale, Mississippi. “[B]lack sharecropper society on the eve of the introduction [in the 1940s] of the mechanical cotton picker [a major spur to the migration] was the equivalent of big-city ghetto society today in many ways. It was the national center of illegitimate childbearing and of the female-headed family.” Ruby had married young, but after her husband had been inducted into the army on the eve of World War II she had fallen in love with a married man, by whom she had had a child. The man’s wife died and Ruby married him, but they broke up after a month. Glowing reports from an aunt who had moved to Chicago persuaded Ruby Daniels to move there in 1946. She found a job doing janitorial work, but eventually lost the job and went on public aid. She was unmarried, and had several children, when in 1953 she met “the most important man in her life.” Luther Haynes, born in 1924 or 1925, a sharecropper from Mississippi, had moved to Chicago in an effort to effect a reconciliation with his wife. The effort had failed. When he met Ruby Daniels he had a well-paying job in an awning factory. They lived together, and had children. But then “Luther began to drink too much. When he drank he got mean, and he and Ruby would get into ferocious quarrels. He was still working, but he wasn’t always bringing his paycheck home.” Ruby got work as a maid. They moved to a poorer part of the city. The relationship went downhill. “It got to the point where [Luther] would go out on Friday evenings after picking up his paycheck, and Ruby would hope he wouldn’t come home, because she knew he would be drunk. On the Friday evenings when he did come home — over the years Ruby developed a dev *1225 astating imitation of Luther, and could recreate the scene quite vividly — he would walk into the apartment, put on a record and turn up the volume, and saunter into their bedroom, a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other, in the mood for love. On one such night, Ruby’s last child, Kevin, was conceived. Kevin always had something wrong with him — he was very moody, he was scrawny, and he had a severe speech impediment. Ruby was never able to find out exactly what the problem was, but she blamed it on Luther; all that alcohol must have gotten into his sperm, she said.”

Ruby was on public aid, but was cut off when social workers discovered she had a man in the house. She got a night job. Luther was supposed to stay with the children while she was at work, especially since they lived in a dangerous neighborhood; but often when she came home, at 3:00 a.m. or so, she would “find the older children awake, and when she would ask them if Luther had been there, the answer would be, ‘No, ma’am.’” Ruby’s last aid cheek, arriving providentially after she had been cut off, enabled the couple to buy a modest house on contract — it “was, by a wide margin, the best place she had ever lived.” But “after only a few months, Luther ruined everything by going out and buying a brand-new 1961 Pontiac. It meant more to him than the house did, and when they couldn’t make the house payment, he insisted on keeping the car” even though she hadn’t enough money to buy shoes for the children. The family was kicked out of the house. They now moved frequently. They were reaching rock bottom. At this nadir, hope appeared in the ironic form of the Robert Taylor Homes, then a brand-new public housing project, now a notorious focus of drug addiction and gang violence. Ruby had had an application for public housing on file for many years, but the housing authority screened out unwed mothers. Told by a social worker that she could have an apartment in the Taylor Homes if she produced a marriage license, she and Luther (who was now divorced from his first wife) were married forthwith and promptly accepted as tenants. “The Haynes family chose to rejoice in their good fortune in becoming residents of the Robert Taylor Homes. As Ruby’s son Larry, who was twelve years old at the time, says, T thought that was the beautifullest place in the world.’ ”

Even in the halcyon days of 1962, the Robert Taylor Homes were no paradise. There was considerable crime, and there were gangs, and Ruby’s son Kermit joined one. Kermit was not Luther’s son and did not recognize his authority. The two quarreled a lot. Meanwhile Luther had lost his job in the awning factory “that he had had for a decade, and then bounced around a little. He lost jobs because of transportation problems, because of layoffs, because of a bout of serious illness, because of his drinking, because he had a minor criminal record (having been in jail for disorderly conduct following a fight with Ruby), and because creditors were after him.” He resumed “his old habit of not returning from work on Fridays after he got his paycheck.” One weekend he didn’t come home at all. In a search of his things Ruby discovered evidence that Luther was having an affair with Dorothy Johnson, a former neighbor. “Luther was not being particularly careful; he saw in Dorothy, who was younger than Ruby, who had three children compared to Ruby’s eight, who had a job while Ruby was on public aid, the promise of an escape from the ghetto, and he was entranced.” The children discovered the affair. Kermit tried to strangle Luther. In 1966 Luther moved out permanently, and eventually he and Ruby divorced.

Ruby remained in the Robert Taylor Homes until 1979, when she moved back to Clarksdale. She had become eligible for social security in 1978; and with her surviving children (one of her sons had died, either a suicide or murdered) now adults, though most of them deeply troubled adults and Kevin, whom Ruby in a custody proceeding described as retarded, still living at home, Ruby “is settling into old age with a sense of contentment about the circumstances she has found.” But “there has always been that nagging sensation of incompleteness, which made itself felt most directly in her relationships with men.”

*1226 After divorcing Ruby, Luther Haynes married Dorothy Johnson. He is still married to her, “owns a home on. the far South Side of Chicago, and has worked for years as a parking-lot attendant; only recently have he and Ruby found that they can speak civilly to each other on the phone.”

There is much more to the book than our paraphrase and excerpts — much about other migrants, about the travails of Ruby’s children, about discrimination against blacks in both the North and the South, and about the politics of poverty programs in Washington and Chicago. But the excerpts we have quoted contain all the passages upon which the Hayneses’ lawsuit is founded.

The charge of libel is confined to three statements in the book: that Haynes left his children alone at night when he was supposed to be watching them; that he lost a job or jobs because of drinking; and that he spent money on a car that he should have used to buy shoes for his children. We do not agree with the defendants that the dismissal of the libel claim must be upheld because Haynes has failed to allege pecuniary loss from the alleged libels (“special damages”). The rule in Illinois, which used to be limited to slander cases but has been extended to all defamation cases, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. Jacobson, 713 F.2d 262, 267 (7th Cir.1983), is that a plaintiff can maintain a suit for defamation without proof of special damages only if the defamatory statement falls into one of four “per se” categories: commission of a crime; infection with a type of communicable disease that could cause the infected person to be shunned; malfeasance or misfeasance in the performance of an office or a job; and (what is closely related, but less redolent of actual misconduct and usable by business firms as well as by workers or professionals) unfitness for one’s profession or trade. Id. at 267-68; Mittelman v. Witous, 135 Ill.2d 220, 142 Ill. Dec. 232, 241, 552 N.E.2d 973, 982 (1989). The statements that Haynes claims are libelous can be interpreted, though just barely, as implying that he was guilty of criminal neglect of his children and was unable to discharge the duties of at least one of his jobs because of alcohol. Ever since modification of the “innocent construction” doctrine in Chapski v. Copley Press, 92 Ill.2d 344, 65 Ill.Dec. 884, 442 N.E.2d 195 (1982), which left the doctrine meaning merely that a court should not strain to put a defamatory interpretation on an ambiguous statement, see id. 65 Ill.Dec. at 888, 442 N.E.2d at 199, Illinois courts (and federal courts when interpreting Illinois law) have been quick to find implications of criminal conduct or of employee or business misconduct in statements that might have seemed susceptible of an interpretation that would have taken them out of the per se categories. See Babb v. Minder, 806 F.2d 749, 758 (7th Cir.1986) (statement that employee had “mooned” held actionable as an accusation of the crime of indecent exposure); Costello v. Capital Cities Communications, Inc., 125 Ill.2d 402, 126 Ill.Dec. 919, 925, 532 N.E.2d 790, 796 (1988) (statement that employee had lied held actionable as implying lack of integrity in performance of duties); Fleming v. Kane County, 636 F.Supp. 742, 746-47 (N.D.Ill.1986) (same); Crinkley v. Dow Jones & Co., 119 Ill.App.3d 147, 74 Ill.Dec. 636, 639, 456 N.E.2d 138, 141 (1983) (statement alleging payoffs to agents of foreign governments held actionable); Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. Jacobson, supra, 713 F.2d at 268-69 (allegations that cigarette company attempted through its advertising to entice children to smoke held actionable).

The requirement of proving special damages does prevent Haynes from basing a libel claim on two other statements in the book that he contends are false: that his drinking was responsible for Kevin’s defects and that his motives for leaving Ruby for Dorothy were financial. (The second is an implication rather than an outright statement, but we shall give Haynes the benefit of the doubt and assume with him that the book implies that his motives were financial rather than — an interpretation that the passage also supports, and that the innocent-construction rule, even in its tempered form after Chap-ski might therefore require be placed on it— a more diffuse hope of betterment.) These statements are not within any of the per se categories and therefore are not actionable, because Haynes alleges no pecuniary injury. *1227 They probably would be nonactionable in any event as obvious statements of opinion (Ruby’s and Lemann’s respectively) rather than of fact. A statement of fact is not shielded from an action for defamation by being prefaced with the words “in my opinion,” but if it is plain that the speaker is expressing a subjective view, an interpretation, a theory, conjecture, or surmise, rather than claiming to be in possession of objectively verifiable facts, the statement is not actionable. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, 17-21, 110 S.Ct. 2695, 2704-07, 111 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990); Mittelman v. Witous, supra, 142 Ill.Dec. at 241-43, 552 N.E.2d at 982-84; Beasley v. St. Mary’s Hospital, 200 Ill.App.3d 1024, 146 Ill.Dec. 714, 720, 558 N.E.2d 677, 683 (1990); Gross v. New York Times Co., 82 N.Y.2d 146, 603 N.Y.S.2d 813, 623 N.E.2d 1163 (1993). The facts about Kevin’s condition and about the respective financial circumstances of Ruby and Dorothy were uncontested, and Ruby and Lemann were entitled to their interpretation of them. Luther drank heavily; the proposition that a man’s heavy drinking can, and that Luther’s heavy drinking did, damage a fetus is represented in the book merely as Ruby’s conjecture. A reasonable reader would not suppose that she had proof, or' even the scientific knowledge that might ground a reasonable inference. As for Luther’s motives for leaving Ruby for Dorothy, they can never be known for sure (even by Luther) and anyone is entitled to speculate on a person’s motives from the known facts of his behavior. Luther Haynes left a poor woman for a less poor one, and Lemann drew a natural though not inevitable inference. He did not pretend to have the inside dope. He and Ruby claim insight, not information that the plaintiff might be able to prove false in a trial.

Lemann’s source for the only statements upon which Luther Haynes can base his claim for defamation, as for most of the rest of what he wrote about Haynes, was Ruby Daniels. He had interviewed Haynes as well, but Haynes in his deposition denied that Lemann had questioned him about his relationship with Ruby. Haynes swears that he never left his children alone in a dangerous neighborhood when he was supposed to be with them, did not by his expenditures on the Pontiac deprive his children of shoes, and was fired'not for drinking but because he had been given a bottle of liquor by a friend which was found unopened in his pocket by his supervisor; since his job was that of an armed security guard, the supervisor was unwilling to take a chance on the truthfulness of his story. Haynes’s version of how he lost a job because of “drinking” is corroborated by Lemann’s notes of his interview with Haynes, but is not mentioned in the book.

It would take a trial to decide whether Ruby Daniels (and hence Nicholas Lemann) or Luther Haynes should be believed on these three matters. But the district judge was nevertheless correct to dismiss the defamation claim because if the gist of a defamatory statement is true, if in other words the statement is substantially true, error in detail is not actionable. Berkos v. National Broadcasting Co., 161 Ill.App.3d 476, 113 Ill.Dec. 683, 693-94, 515 N.E.2d 668, 678-79 (1987); American International Hospital v. Chicago Tribune Co., 136 Ill.App.3d 1019, 91 Ill.Dec. 479, 782, 483 N.E.2d 965, 968 (1985); Tunney v. American Broadcasting Co., 109 Ill.App.3d 769, 65 Ill.Dec. 294, 297-98, 441 N.E.2d 86, 89-90 (1982); Vachet v. Central Newspapers, Inc., 816 F.2d 313 (7th Cir.1987); Herron v. King Broadcasting Co., 112 Wash.2d 762, 776 P.2d 98, 102-05 (1989); Hovey v. Iowa State Daily Publication Board, Inc., 372 N.W.2d 253, 256 (Ia.1985); Tschirgi v. Lander Wyoming State Journal, 706 P.2d 1116, 1120 (Wyo.1985); Korkala v. W.W. Norton & Co., 618 F.Supp. 152, 155 (S.D.N.Y.1985).

To evaluate the application of this rule to Haynes’s libel claims requires us to consider facts brought out in discovery and not contested, although they are not in the book. Haynes in his deposition admitted to drinking heavily during the period when he lost his job because of the unopened liquor bottle in his pocket. He admitted to being arrested and jailed for assaulting a police officer after drinking. When he walked out on Ruby he also walked out on his four children by her, and he refused to support *1228 them. She was forced to obtain court orders for child support. Haynes repeatedly flouted the orders and eventually was jailed for contempt. During their divorce proceedings it came out that, after leaving Ruby, he and Dorothy Johnson had had a marriage ceremony and he had entered-their names in the marriage registry of the county clerk’s office — two years before his divorce from Ruby.

Beside these uncontested facts — not to mention the facts about Haynes in the book that he does not contend are false — the alleged falsehoods pale. They do not exhibit him in a worse light than a bare recitation of the uncontested facts about his behavior in relation to Ruby and her children would do. For Lemann left out much that was true. He did not mention the bigamous marriage, the repeated flouting of child-support orders, the arrest for assaulting a police officer, or the jailing for contempt. Substitute the true for the false (if Haynes is believed), and the damage to Haynes’s reputation would be no less.

The rule of substantial truth is based on a recognition that falsehoods which do no incremental damage to the plaintiffs reputation do not injure the only interest that the law of defamation protects. A news report that contains a false statement is actionable “only when ‘significantly greater opprobrium’ results from the report containing the falsehood than would result from the report without the falsehood.” Herron v. King Broadcasting Co., supra, 776 P.2d at 102. Even when the plaintiff in a defamation suit is not a public figure, the Supreme Court insists in the name of the First Amendment that unless the author is deliberately lying or is recklessly indifferent to the truth or falsity of what he says (neither is a plausible hypothesis here), the plaintiff must prove actual though not necessarily pecuniary harm in order to recover damages. Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 349-50, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 3011-12, 41 L.Ed.2d 789 (1974). Falsehoods that do not harm the plaintiffs reputation more than a full recital of the true facts about him would do are thus not actionable. The rule making substantial truth a complete defense and the constitutional limitations on defamation suits coincide.

Ordinarily the question whether a defamatory work is substantially true although erroneous in some details is for the jury. Kohn v. West Hawaii Today, Inc., 65 Haw. 584, 656 P.2d 79, 84 (1982). But no reasonable jury, even if it believed Luther Haynes over Ruby Daniels on every issue on which they differ, could find that The Promised Land was not substantially true in its depiction of Luther at the time he lived with Ruby. He was a heavy drinker, a bad husband, a bad father, an erratic employee. These are things either that he concedes or that are incontestably established by the judicial records in his matrimonial litigation. Whether he left the children alone at night on some occasions when Ruby was working, or was fired for drinking rather than for having liquor on his person while working, or preferred to spend money on his car than on his children’s shoes, are details that, while not trivial, would not if corrected have altered the picture that the true facts paint. And it makes no difference that the true facts were unknown until the trial. A person does not have a legally protected right to a reputation based on the concealment of the truth. This is implicit in the rule that truth — not just known truth (see Restatement (Second) of Torts § 581A, comment h (1977); Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 116, at pp. 840-41 (5th ed. 1984))—is a complete defense to defamation. And the burden of proving falsity rests on the plain tiff. Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U.S. 767, 776, 106 S.Ct. 1558, 1563-64, 89 L.Ed.2d 783 (1986).

We must be careful, however, that we are not construing the gist of the allegedly defamatory statements so broadly as to invite defendants to commit, in effect, a further but privileged libel, by bringing to light every discreditable act that the plaintiff may have committed, in an effort to show that he is as “bad” as the defamatory statements depict him. This would strip people who had done bad things of any legal protection against being defamed; they would be defamation outlaws. The true damaging facts must be closely related to the false ones. But that *1229 test is satisfied. Luther abandoned his children and was eventually jailed for doing so. These truths encompass and transcend what, whether or not it might be elevated to criminal neglect, is, after all, common enough— leaving children, some of them teenagers, unattended late at night. (And how different is that from leaving a child at night with a teenage babysitter?) An armed security guard who is discovered by his employer to have a bottle of liquor in his pocket is equivalent in irresponsible employee conduct to an ordinary worker found drinking on the job. And a decision to spend money on a car rather than on one’s children’s clothes is subsumed by total financial abandonment of one’s children in violation of court orders, an abandonment compounded by a bigamous marriage to a woman who herself had children. The allegedly false facts about Luther were variants of the true that did not paint him in a worse light. Corresponding to the “immaterial error[s]” of which the substantial-truth cases speak, Sivulich v. Howard Publications, Inc., 126 Ill.App.3d 129, 81 Ill. Dec. 416, 418, 466 N.E.2d 1218, 1220 (1984), the alleged falsehoods were merely illustrations of undoubted truths about Luther Haynes’s character at the time, illustrations that even if false in detail conveyed an accurate impression. They were therefore substantially true within the meaning which this term must bear to make sense of the cases.

The major claim in the complaint, and the focus of the appeal, is not defamation, however; it is invasion of the right of privacy. In tort law the term “right of privacy” covers several distinct wrongs. Using a celebrity’s (or other person’s) name or picture in advertising without his consent. Carson v. Here’s Johnny Portable Toilets, Inc., 698 F.2d 831 (6th Cir.1983); Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Social Change, Inc. v. American Heritage Products, Inc., 250 Ga. 135, 296 S.E.2d 697 (1982); Haelan Laboratories v. Topps Chewing Gum, 202 F.2d 866 (2d Cir.1953); Douglass v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 769 F.2d 1128, 1138-39 (7th Cir.1985). Tapping someone’s phone, or other wise invading a person’s private space. De May v. Roberts, 46 Mich. 160, 9 N.W. 146, 149 (1881); Rhodes v. Graham, 238 Ky. 225, 37 S.W.2d 46 (1931); Roach v. Harper, 143 W.Va. 869, 105 S.E.2d 564 (1958); Nader v. General Motors Corp., 25 N.Y.2d 560, 307 N.Y.S.2d 647, 544-55, 255 N.E.2d 765, 770-71 (1970); Dietemann v. Time, Inc., 449 F.2d 245 (9th Cir.1971). Harassing a celebrity by following her too closely, albeit on a public street. Cf. Galella v. Onassis, 487 F.2d 986, 995 and n. 12 (2d Cir.1973). Casting a person in a false light by publicizing details of the person’s life that while true are so selected or highlighted as to convey a misleading impression of the person’s character. Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374, 391-94, 87 S.Ct. 534, 543-45, 17 L.Ed.2d 456 (1967). Publicizing personal facts that while true and not misleading are so intimate that their disclosure to the public is deeply embarrassing to the person thus exposed and is perceived as gratuitous by the community. Daily Times Democrat v. Graham, 276 Ala. 380, 162 So.2d 474 (1964); Barber v. Time, Inc., 348 Mo. 1199, 159 S.W.2d 291 (1942); Diaz v. Oakland Tribune, Inc., 139 Cal.App.3d 118, 188 Cal.Rptr. 762, 767-78 (1983); Banks v. King Features Syndicate, Inc., 30 F.Supp. 352 (S.D.N.Y.1939). The last, the publicizing of personal facts, is the aspect of invasion of privacy charged by the Hayneses.

Even people who have nothing rationally to be ashamed of can be mortified by the publication of intimate details of their life. Most people in no wise deformed or disfigured would nevertheless be deeply upset if nude photographs of themselves were published in a newspaper or a book. They feel the same way about photographs of their sexual activities, however “normal,” or about a narrative of those activities, or about having their medical records publicized. Although it is well known that every human being defecates, no adult human being in our society wants a newspaper to show a picture 'of him defecating. The desire for privacy illustrated by these examples is a mysterious but deep fact about human personality. It deserves and in our society receives legal protection. The nature of the injury shows, by the way, that the defendants are wrong to argue that this branch of the right of privacy requires proof of special damages. Manville v. Borg-Warner Corp., 418 F.2d 434, 436-37 *1230 (10th Cir.1969); Vassiliades v. Garfinckel’s, 492 A.2d 580, 594 (D.C.App.1985).

But this is not the character of the depictions of the Hayneses in The Promised Land. Although the plaintiffs claim that the book depicts their “sex life” and “ridicules” Luther Haynes’s lovemaking (the reference is to the passage we quoted in which the author refers to Ruby’s “devastating imitation” of Luther’s manner when he would come home Friday nights in an amorous mood), these characterizations are misleading. No sexual act is described in the book. No intimate details are revealed. Entering one’s bedroom with a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other is not foreplay. Ruby’s speculation that Kevin’s problems may have been due to Luther’s having been a heavy drinker is not the narration of a sexual act.

We said that proof of special damages is not required in a case in which the public revelation of personal facts is claimed to be an invasion of privacy. Even so, a plaintiff is not allowed to evade the rule that requires proof of such damages in defamation cases (outside the per se categories) by attempting to prove that some of the personal facts publicized about him are false, unless he is prepared to prove special damages— and perhaps, as we are about to see, there is no “unless.” Haynes denies that his drinking had anything to do with his son Kevin’s defect's or that he was actuated by mercenary considerations in leaving Ruby for Dorothy. These denials, we have seen, could not be made the basis of a libel ease in the absence of proof of special damages, here lacking. No more, we think, can they be used to enhance a privacy case, whether it is a false-light case, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. Jacobson, swpra, 713 F.2d at 267; Harte v. Chicago Council of Lawyers, 220 Ill.App.3d 255, 163 Ill.Dec. 324, 327, 329, 581 N.E.2d 275, 278, 280 (1991); Schaffer v. Zekman, 196 Ill.App.3d 727, 143 Ill.Dec. 916, 921-22, 554 N.E.2d 988, 993-94 (1990); see generally Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, § 652E, comment e, or, as here, a case about the publication of private facts. Leidholdt v. L.F.P. Inc., 860 F.2d 890, 895 (9th Cir.1988). Indeed, that type of case-presupposes the truth of the facts disclosed. Id. If they are false, the interest invaded is that protected by the defamation and false-light torts: the interest in being represented truthfully to the world.

Absence of special damages may be the reason why the Hayneses have not appealed the dismissal of their claim that the defendants east Luther in a false light — though in fairness to him we should point out that they may have placed him in a false light with respect to his motives for leaving Ruby. Lemann’s interview notes suggest (as the book does not, at least not clearly) that the major difference which Haynes perceived between the two women was one of character rather than of financial wherewithal. According to the notes, Haynes told Lemann that Ruby “never wanted to work. She wanted to sit around and be on aid. I called Ruby and asked her why she let ‘Nita [their daughter] have a baby and she said, She’s grown. I couldn’t handle that talk, so I said forget it. Ruby was on aid when I met her, and she wanted to have more kids so she could have more aid. Dorothy had three kids, and a job.”

This is an aside. The branch of privacy law that the Hayneses invoke in their appeal is not concerned with, and is not a proper surrogate for legal doctrines that are concerned with, the accuracy of the private facts revealed. It is concerned with the propriety of stripping away the veil of privacy with which we cover the embarrassing, the shameful, the tabooed, truths about us. Leidholdt v. L.F.P. Inc., supra, 860 F.2d at 895. The revelations in the book are not about the intimate details of the Hayneses’ life. They are about misconduct, in particular Luther’s. (There is very little about Dorothy in the book, apart from the fact that she had had an affair with Luther while he was still married to Ruby and that they eventually became and have remained lawfully married.) The revelations are about his heavy drinking, his unstable employment, his adultery, his irresponsible and neglectful behavior toward his wife and children. So we must consider cases in which the right of privacy has been invoked as a shield against the revelation of previous misconduct.

*1231 Two early cases illustrate the range of judicial thinking. In Melvin, v. Reid, 112 Cal.App. 285, 297 Pac. 91 (1931), the plaintiff was a former prostitute, who had be