Sex Crimes: An "idiot[] ... drunk on pomo feminist legal theory"

That is what the Weekly Standard called me in the most recent edition of the Scrapbook. The link on the magazine's website requires a subscription, but this is a free version on Lexis that has some screwed up formatting. This is the whole segment (with what I believe is the correct formatting) about the citation of my article in Kennedy v. Louisiana:

Kennedy's Footnote

Buried in Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana is a remarkable citation. Making the inarguable point that a State that punishes child rape by death may remove a strong incentive for the rapist not to kill the victim, Kennedy mysteriously feels the need to point curious readers to a St. John's Law Review article by Corey Rayburn Yung, a former clerk on the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. You can get the gist of the article from the state-of-the art academic wordplay in its title: "Better Dead Than R(ap)ed?: The Patriarchal Rhetoric Driving Capital Rape Statutes."

Proponents of applying the death penalty to child rapists, per Yung, are driven by a new, but very old, rhetoric. Yung doesn't explain how something can be both "new" and "very old"; but he does argue that "as long as populations and politicians can make the appeal that rape is an evil worse than death, they can push these laws with a load of Victorian, patriarchal baggage attached." Writes Yung,
When womyn's lives are leveraged into a utilitarian calculus that values chastity over survival, the Victorian shackles that feminism has sought to break reassert themselves in insidious fashion. Womyn's choices to live or die are then judged by cultural norms derived from patriarchy.
This is academic mumbo-jumbo. Also, as you can see in the above passage, it's riddled with spelling errors. Yung writes in one of his many footnotes, "I choose to adopt the gender-neutral term 'womyn' to refer to the people more commonly called 'women.'?" Whatever you say, Corey.

From now on, THE SCRAPBOOK chooses to adopt the term "idiotz" to refer to the people more commonly called former law clerks drunk on pomo feminist legal theory.

I guess I should be flattered that the Weekly Standard took notice of my little article. However, I can't see how this is "journalism" using even the loosest sense of the word. The Weekly Standard makes no substantive attacks against my article and doesn't even criticize Justice Kennedy for citing the article. Instead, it engages in personal attacks and snide remarks directed at me. The Weekly Standard article also contains several errors and oddities.

The cite in question wasn't even a "footnote" - it was in the text of the opinion. And the point cited is certainly not "inarguable" - just read the posts at Sentencing Law & Policy, Crime & Consequences, and here to see different perspectives on the issue.

The Weekly Standard then takes just three sentences out of my 25,000+ word law review article (none of which were relevant to the Supreme Court cite) and makes fun of them. The Weekly Standard writes that I did not "explain how something can be both 'new' and 'very old.'" In fact, that is the major theme in the article and is explained throughout. The point of the article is that the "old" Victorian rhetoric that it is "better to be dead than raped" (hence the title) is being revived and has become "new" again in support of capital child rape statutes.

While I certainly did use the word "womyn" in the article (something I no longer do), in no way can that usage seriously be considered a "spelling mistake." As the Weekly Standard noted, I explained my word choice in a footnote. What the Weekly Standard did not mention was that in that footnote, I cited the spelling as proper according to such crazy off-the-wall sources as The New Oxford American Dictionary and Random House Webster's College Dictionary. You may disagree with my choice (and as I mentioned, I've stopped fighting that etymology battle), but it just isn't honest reporting to leave out the authorities cited for the sake of an inaccurate joke.

The Weekly Standard made no attempt to contact me before they ran the article. I have always tried to read a wide range of periodicals including the Weekly Standard, but I am truly disappointed at how low it has sunk.