FAMILY GUY

I'm getting to this late, but the DCBA posted a statement on blogosphere anonymity earlier in the week. The post, a response to Delaware blogger Dana Garrett’s threats to out anonymous bloggers, states:

However deep the blogosphere’s political divisions, surely there’s common ground on this: cheap bullying to stifle speech cannot be accepted. If identities are fair game for some on the Delaware blogosphere, what will Dana and people like him do the next time they disagree with a poster, anonymous or otherwise? Home and work numbers put up on the Web with accompanying posts egging readers to call and harass? Maybe some digital pics of the target person leaving work or dining with their families with “Caption This Photo” written underneath?

It turns out this isn’t anything that Dana would really mind. In his entry for the “Carving Myself an Exception in the Face of My Well-Documented Hypocrisy” category, Dana shares his feelings:

I took two of the sites down because I read the writers’ claims in a discussion thread at DelaThought (now erased from the site) that the principal reason why they write anonymously is to protect their families from harm. I was revolted by their ludicrous and improbable claim about potential harm. Knowing the smears that often appear in their posts, it seemed obvious to me they were merely using their spouses and children as a pretext to cover their libels, defamations, and smears about their perceived enemies. It sickened me to see their pseudonyms when I opened my site.

[Emphasis added.]

Hey, genius, people don’t use their families to shield their anonymous blogging. They use anonymous blogging to shield their families from nuts on the Net. This should be obvious but Dana, for whatever reason, is so possessed of hatred for his perceived enemies he can’t even acknowledge they have this basic human concern, much less that it’s a legitimate one. If he can’t get something so simple, so common sense, then there’s no reason to believe he can accurately gauge anyone’s motivations. Which is a real problem for him when it comes to how he measures what anonymous speech deserves protection:

Anonymous blogging is fine, but when people use it to commit libel w/ impunity by hiding behind their anonymity, then such persons' names should be revealed so that others can determine if the blogger is trustworthy, a known confabulator, or a person with a vested interest in spreading the libel (that is a big one, as it turns out). Exposing liars is a good thing. We need more of it.

Dana’s free speech yardstick assumes he’s capable of reading it, and the fact that so often his perceptions of others -- how to put it nicely? -- don’t comport with reality proves that he isn’t. If Dana’s viewpoint is such that he can’t understand that people he doesn’t agree with have families that they love and want to protect by blogging anonymously, then there’s no reason to believe this guy can tell up from down, let alone libel from fair criticism or a lie from a truth he just doesn’t want to hear.

In his own mind, Dana might believe he’s capable of being the arbiter of what anonymous speech should be protected. The rest of the Delaware blogosphere knows better.

Related: Michelle Malkin today writes on how invading the privacy of their political opponents is becoming a favorite tactic among moonbats. Hopefully linking to this won’t give Dana any more bad ideas.

Posted by JakeM at July 1, 2006 04:12 PM | TrackBack