There's quite a bit of hullabloo on the internets today about two bloggers hired by the Edwards campaign to reach out to the online world, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. The background is reported in the NYT and by AP. Latest word from Salon is that the two have now been fired. (UPDATE: now it appears Edwards has reversed course and will keep the bloggers on .) Predictably, bloggers on the left and the right are now rushing the barricades, ready with copious bookmarks to play the "other side is worse" game.
Let's be frank: this is the chickens coming home to roost. It's like the kid who posts pictures of himself drunk out of his mind on his myspace page and then later applies to be a clerk for a Supreme Court Justice. Nothing is ever deleted out there, people. You need to think about your grandmother reading your blog posts, or all your future bosses -- if you're not comfortable with that, then think twice. All those bloggers who got extra hits by venting their spleens with the most colorful (and offensive) rants they could summon up will never be able to shed those posts. And that is as it should be, in my opinion. I'm not condoning a witch hunt, which this could easily devolve into, but I am saying that people should be held accountable for what they say.
Glenn Reynolds: "A lot of the lefty bloggers are up in arms that this has become a scandal... I suspect that this is because a lot of them would like to join the establishment, and now fear that their prior anti-establishment rantings will get in the way."
Sure they'll get in the way. Words have consequences. It's easy to type them, and now it's easy to circulate them instantly to the world. But they can do damage, and this is powerful evidence of that. You can't say hateful things about other people, even those people who don't read your blog, and presume that it will never matter. If this episode helps to teach the blogosphere this lesson, and if it helps to restrain some of the bile sloshing around out there, then in my book it will be a good thing.
This isn't about censorship... the argument that bloggers should be able to say whatever offensive things they like because of free speech is a straw man, in my perspective. I'm not saying that these bloggers should be prevented from saying what they said -- we all agree that free speech is an unrestrained good. What I am saying is that they should be held accountable for what they said, which is entirely different.
I'm with the commenter on John Amato's blog: "The real question is how do we heal the wounds and divisions in this country. If it's even possible at this point." Regardless of whether you agree with the left or the right, this kind of hateful language damages all of us, and it undermines our common community. For that reason we should steer clear of it, regardless of which side is putting it out. We can still make our points (more effectively and forcefully, in fact) without resorting to insults, profanity, and the language of hate. Hopefully this is a further sign that dialogue on the internet is maturing -- past adolescence and toward adulthood.