Outed blogger Rosemary Port blames model Liskula Cohen for 'skank' stink
By
George Rush
DAILY NEWS GOSSIP COLUMNIST
Sunday, August 23rd 2009, 5:32 AM
Sorry seems to be the hardest word for the blogger who anonymously scorned a model as a "ho" and a "skank," igniting a legal and media maelstrom.
Speaking out for the first time since a court order forced
Google to reveal her identity, blogger Rosemary Port tells the Daily News that model
Liskula Cohen should blame herself for the uproar.
"This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing," said Port, whose "Skanks in
NYC" site branded the 37-year-old Cohen an "old hag."
"By going to the press, she defamed herself," Port said.
"Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it," Port said. "That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated."
The pretty 29-year-old
Fashion Institute of Technology student added that she's furious at Google for revealing her identity, so much so that she plans to file a $15 million federal lawsuit against the Web giant.
"When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected," Port said.
"But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."
In her suit, she'll charge Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity," said her high-powered attorney
Salvatore Strazzullo.
"I'm ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court," Strazzullo said. "Our Founding Fathers wrote 'The Federalist Papers' under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn't that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?"
"I feel proud to live in a country where you're not persecuted for your opinions," Port said. "That right has to be protected.
"Even though people are now taking shots at me on the Web, I believe those people have a right to their opinions - and their anonymity," said Port, who is slated to appear on ABC's "
Good Morning America" tomorrow.
A
Manhattan Supreme Court judge forced Google to unmask Port, rejecting Port's claim that blogs "serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting" and shouldn't be regarded as fact.
The surprising decision, though, seems to have only increased the bad blood between the two women, who knew each other from
Manhattan's fashion scene and reportedly quarreled after Cohen badmouthed Port to her ex-boyfriend.
