I have to wonder if the words "Go ahead, make my day; I'll see you in court" are echoing in the mind of Tucker Carlson.

An incident that occurred almost a month ago, on October 13, is now coming to light, thanks to publicity hound and purported Democrat presidential candidate Michael Avenatti. The man that Carlson calls the “creepy porn lawyer” for his representation of Stormy Daniels, issued a series of three tweets yesterday and included in the first tweet this cell phone video of the incident:

Carlson responded with detailed statement, sent to Joe Concha of The Hill:

“On October 13, I had dinner with two of my children and some family friends at the Farmington Country Club in Charlottesville, Virginia," Carlson said. "Toward the end of the meal, my 19-year-old daughter went to the bathroom with a friend. On their way back through the bar, a middle aged man stopped my daughter and asked if she was sitting with Tucker Carlson. My daughter had never seen the man before. She answered: ‘That’s my dad,’ and pointed to me. The man responded, ‘Are you Tucker’s whore?’ He then called her a ‘f*** c***.’ "

"My daughter returned to the table in tears," the statement continues. "She soon left the table and the club. My son, who is also a student, went into the bar to confront the man. I followed. My son asked the man if he’d called his sister a ‘whore’ and a ‘c**t.’ The man admitted he had, and again become profane. My son threw a glass of red wine in the man’s face and told him to leave the bar, which he soon did."

"Immediately after the incident, I described these events to the management of the Farmington Country Club," Carlson said. "The club spent more than three weeks investigating the incident. Last week, they revoked the man’s membership and threw him out of the club." 

"I love my children," he adds. "It took enormous self-control not to beat the man with a chair, which is what I wanted to do. I think any father can understand the overwhelming rage and shock that I felt seeing my teenage daughter attacked by a stranger." 

"But I restrained myself. I did not assault this man, and neither did my son," the statement concludes. "That is a lie. Nor did I know the man was gay or Latino, not that it would have mattered. What happened on October 13 has nothing to do with identity politics. It was a grotesque violation of decency. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”  

Avenatti responded by calling Carlson a liar, in second series of 3 tweets.

 Avenatti has already seriously damaged one client with a reckless lawsuit:

 …a California federal court dismissed porn star Stormy Daniels’ defamation lawsuit and ordered her to pay Trump’s legal fees — in a humiliating defeat for her “Creepy Porn Lawyer,” Michael Avenatti.

In dismissing the lawsuit, the judge said a tweet that Trump had posted about Daniels (see below) was “rhetorical hyperbole” rather than defamation and was protected by the First Amendment. Ha!

One category of speech that the Supreme Court has exempted from First Amendment protections is called “fighting words,” first noted in 1942, creating the “fighting words doctrine” in Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire.  Virginia, like a number of states, has passed a law, The Fighting Words Statute,  Section 8.01-45 of the Virginia Code.

To recover in a private lawsuit brought under § 8.01-45, the words used must not only be insults, but they must be fighting words that “tend to violence and breach of the peace.” The United States Supreme Court has defined fighting words as “those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction.” Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 20 (1971). The Supreme Court later expanded the definition by clarifying that provocation of “immediate” or “imminent” violence was required before mere insults could fall outside the protection of the First Amendment. N.A.A.C.P. v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 928 (1982).

In any lawsuit, it would be up to a jury of Virginians to decide if calling a 19 year old girl the vile epithets used by the plaintiff meets the definition. Unless the Southern culture of gallantry and chivalry has done a 180 degree turn (which does happen), Avenatti’s new client may find himself in a world of hurt like that of Stormy Daniels.