Sherman Alexie Can't Testify? The Stranger Responds.

The P-I's Greg Johns reported today that lawyers for the Sonics don't want Sherman Alexie to testify in the Sports Trial of the Century.

Alexie is, of course, possibly the best novelist the Northwest has ever produced...but, more germane, he's the author of the serial epic Sonics Death Watch in The Stranger.

But to the Sonics' law-talkers, Alexie is a "writer known for his profanity-laced columns about the Sonics."

The Stranger will not let this stand. And so they've penned a message of their own to the judge in the case, Marsha Pechman.

A sampling:

Mr. Alexie is a man of strong emotions and brilliant opinions who is making an important point about a big-ass civic institution and doing so using the best, plainest, most honest language he knows how to use. If that language involves a few “F-bombs” once in a while, tough shit. The city can take it. Your Honor, from what I’ve heard, can take it. The attorneys present (foul-mouthed beasts, all of them) can take it and certainly will not wilt in the presence of the language they use every time there’s a recess. Perhaps most importantly, this city’s devoted basketball fans...will not be learning any new words even if Mr. Alexie, upon taking the stand, unleashes his entire vocabulary of cuss words, epithets, and crass euphemisms.