News article:

If Al Gore thinks postmodernism has gotten out of hand, he ought to talk to his friends the trial lawyers. The Los Angeles Times reports that consumer attorney Neil Fineman is suing Ineedanewgirlfriend.com, an online dating service, for fraud:

To prove his client's contention, Fineman says, he concocted a handful of cyber straw men--false profiles of men he believed no woman would want to be involved with. They were the Internet's most ineligible bachelors, he said: hard-drinking, overweight, out-of-work men. Their goal, he stated in their profiles, was to meet rich, beautiful women who would support them.

The offers came rolling in.

"You sound HOT!" stated one reply, which included a photo of an attractive woman in a bikini. "I have a never-ending amount of money that my parents left me and would like to spend it on you. We can vacation year-round and stay drunk the whole time. Please say you will meet me."

Fineman said "women" who responded to his bogus profiles had varying backgrounds. "One claimed to have strong Christian values and was looking for a man to go on long walks on the beach," the lawyer said. "Another woman worked for a company selling adult toys and was interested in 'experimenting.' "

In some cases, the plaintiff's made-up profiles generated identical replies, although the names and photos were different, the lawyer said.

"There's no way these beautiful women could have actually been interested in the jerks we made up," Fineman said.

So let's see if we have this straight. A nonexistent man receives e-mail from a nonexistent woman, and that's grounds for a lawsuit? Maybe Fineman can enlist the Gore administration's Justice Department to file an imaginary-friend-of-the-court brief.