A friend of mine
is a fairly well known defender of human rights in other countries. Amanda is tireless in her efforts, the sort of very intense woman who can be utterly humorless at times but can also be unexpectedly spontaneous and goofy. She has a will of iron combined with a level of intelligence that almost everyone finds intimidating. In short, the sort of woman who goes around doing Great Things at the cost of not having much of a personal life.

Apparently when she was finishing her PhD at a major university she had managed to come to the attention of the editors of the school paper, and had pissed them off. Just before graduation they ran a satirical piece about her, featuring a picture of her head spliced onto some bikini babe. (This was before Photoshop.) As Amanda is very pretty with long curly blonde hair and a very fit body, it was apparently a rather believable picture. Someone showed it to her, and she was NOT amused. Not at ALL.

She and a friend spent the night going around with a pair of bolt cutters and stealing the papers out of all of the dispensers around the campus, and ended up with an enormous pile of them. For some reason they decided to set fire to them- on the lawn of the university president's house.

The following day cold reality set in and she realized what she had done. She packed up her stuff quickly and loaded it into the back of her friend's pickup and rode out of town under a tarpaulin about an hour before the police appeared at the door of her apartment, and got her diploma through the mail. She didn't set foot in that state for the next seven years, until the statute of limitations had run out.

She's now an internationally known human rights defender, but she came within an inch of being a convicted arsonist.

Once in a while we still tease her about that.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 10 May 2011, 2:52, 3 replies)

Assume her work sometimes includes
freedom of the press, for which she receives extra stick?
(sarcastic fringehead feet of clay, buns of steel, head of lettuce, Tue 10 May 2011, 9:16, closed)

Most of her work
involves violence against women in Central America. And yes, part of that is using the press to name and shame. So the irony is even greater in some ways.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 10 May 2011, 14:11, closed)

yay
new b3ta image challenge time! :-)
(haberman is singing in the changes, Tue 10 May 2011, 11:42, closed)