Paul C. Tate, Jr. v. John Ed Bradley and the Washington Post Company

EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Tate filed suit to rectify what he viewed as defamation by Appellees John Ed Bradley and The Washington Post in their depiction of him as a Mardi Gras merrymaker. The newspaper article, carried as a human-interest feature, was titled “Cajun Mardi Gras — The Native Returns for Raucous Rights” and recounted the events of Mardi Gras 1984 in the heart of Acadian Louisiana, from the perspective of a recently-departed native son. Tate objected to the following excerpt:

The gravel road cuts through a dried-out soybean field and a crawfish farm. The courir stops…