The tale of the red underpants!

Terrence Watson writes about the highlights of Vigna vs. Levant in the Western Standard:

I saw them, from the corner of my eye, as the plaintiff bent to gather his many, many boxes, full of useless screen shots, irrelevant transcripts, and (for all I knew) Ezra's grade school report cards. And I saw a lot of them, his red underpants. I have absolutely no reason to point this out, except it made several of us laugh.

Blazing Cat Fur has special courtroom-inspired art:

Legal experts are calling it the "Sous-vêtements Rouges Gambit". Giacomo Vigna's red underpants were exposed in court during the Vigna v Levant libel trial opening new vistas in legal strategy. Is this tactic truly revolutionary in nature? Will it reshape the Canadian legal landscape? Were they conservative Stanfields as befits the dignity of the court or something a little more daring? How will it impact the Judge's decision? This development may affect the very underwear underpinnings of our of justice system.

Xanthippa was there, with two most interesting, lengthy reports:

In my never-humble-opinion, the judge’s body language went from ‘guardedly impartial’ to ‘suppressing the giggles’ to ‘bored’ to ‘mildly frustrated’ to ‘seriously disturbed’ by Mr. Vigna’s behaviour (which, at one point, included Mr. Vigna actually physically pulling up his pants as he shot a self-satisfied ‘we got him now’ look to his only supporte in the audience over something that was NOT a ‘goth-cha’ moment, but rather another demonstration of how Mr. Vigna just ‘did not get’ what was happening around him….)

And

Mr. Vigna continued in a manner similar to the one I observed yesterday. Much of the time (when standing up) he would rest his hands on the desk and lean forward in a bullishly aggressive manner (at least, it looked so from my point of view). At one point the judge requested him (and it almost seemed to me that the judge was a little exasperated at having to do so) to not lean so far forward because he was so close to the microphone, it was interfering with the microphone’s proper function.

(Aside: I think Mr. Vigna was using one of the new super-awesome Sharpie pens – guaranteed not to bleed through to the next page. There are two types of this new pen – the ‘click’ type and the ‘cap’ type. To the best of my observations, Mr. Vigna was using the ‘cap’ type, blue, if I am not mistaken. I rather like these ones, and used the same kind (Sharpie, cap-type, blue ink) to record my notes from today between the first break and the lunch break (approximately 12:20 and 13:00 hours… I always switch pens and ink colours between breaks…. These ‘cap’ type Sharpie pens come in black, blue, red, green and purple – but, as far as I know, you can only get the purple and green ones if you buy a multi-pack. The GTEC-C4 pen multi-packs include the same colours – but also add orange, which the Sharpie ‘cap’-type multipack does not have.)

At other times, when Mr. Vigna was not leaning against the desk, he seemed (in my layman’s eyes) to have had difficulty containing his ‘energy’ – or, in other vernacular, one could say he seemed to have had ‘too much sharp chi’, if you will.

He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Even in between ‘weight shifts’, he kind of bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet. In addition, he kept making small little nervous movements with his hands. And, yes, he did pull his pants up a few times –

LOL about the pens. The picture shows Ezra Levant and me at the War Museum last winter or the winter before when he gave a talk there.