Comments on: Once around the blogosphere

By: T. V.

T. V. — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 08:40:09 +0000

Address, phone number, license plate, relevant public financial information please, Thorley. Already theoretically public. At the bottom not just of one post, but every post you make here. Just make a sig file. It’s not like I’m asking you to retype it every time. You’re the one claiming that frequency and breadth of distribution of personal information makes no practical or moral difference. It’s a perfectly fair test of your proposition. Breadth and frequency, please.

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:10:01 +0000

Turnabout is fair play, yes?

Does that mean that we’ll be seeing live broadcasts of Michael Moore’s living room on the web and on television?

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:29:10 +0000

Turnabout is fair play, yes? Has someone provided the home address for FOTF leader James Dobson?

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:50:59 +0000

T.V. wrote:

That’s why this story has legs. It was an incitement to violence against a man’s family by a group who pretends to speak on behalf of families.

Then the story (at least that aspect of it) has no actual legs since there was nothing in the email that qualifies as an “incitement to violence” in any meaningful sense of the term. Unless of course Moore’s almost routine harassment of others including the infamous “LucyCam” now also qualify as an “incitement to violence.” No more so I’d wager than protesting at the homes of Judge Kenneth Starr or Karl Rove.

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 18:57:15 +0000

I’m curious why “outing” someone as a hypocritical homosexual is as bad as revealing someone’s home address and phone number to a hostile crowd in a deliberate effort to have that person and his/her family menaced. Is it because those who object to closeted conservative gays being outed, know that their own side will also persecute and menace and even worse, perhaps, to the now-revealed hypocrites in the name of godliness and traditional values? Is this an admission, then, that the “Christian Right” is really the Xtian Wrong, the party of those who think it’s okay to beat people to death for their minority sexuality? Otherwise, how is it any different from revealing any other public person’s hypocritical disjuncture between practice and preaching, or the celebrated tactic of taking photographs of those who frequent “adult bookstores” and publishing them? Or is the last only okay because it’s done by “Christian” ministers? Bozhemoi, but I’m sick of unprincipled ideallists.

By: Lance Boyle

Lance Boyle — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 05:11:25 +0000

As far as I know, no churches have been bombed by pro-choice atheists. The body count on the other side may still be in the single digits or even the low two digits but, you know, c’mon. In the only prominent political assassinations I can think of that targeted right-wing/Republican politicians in the US, Wallace, Ford, Reagan were each non-fatal – two wing shots and a complete miss, not to make light of George Wallace’s debilitating injury, or Jim Brady’s. The list of left-wing politicians who have been killed is lengthy. Ghastly long. Spooky long. The vicious psychopaths who support the even more vicious psychopaths who gun down doctors and blow up clinics are part of an even larger group of mentally ill and ungoverned dimwits. There’s no boundaries between them, it goes seamlessly from Falwell to the shrieking, armed, lunatics. It’s fatuous to presume that controversial left-wing celebrities aren’t deluged with death threats and hate mail, just because they aren’t publicly announcing it. Which a little thought would suggest might just intensify the problem.

By: T. V.

T. V. — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 23:48:06 +0000

“It’s already public information anyway” Bloggers who make this tired claim should be willing to place all their information that is technically “public” on the front page of their weblog and in the signature of all their emails. Their financial information, street address, legal records—anything that is hypothetically available either with or without paying a fee. Attach it to every single post, in every medium. The basis of the pooh-pooh is that there is no difference between information being available and information being promulgated to saturation, made available to people to whom it would not have occured to look it up and who wonder what might be done with it now that it’s been placed in their hands so easily. There is an inertial barrier that prevents much “public” information from being widely disseminated and placed before the minds of volatile people who might act violently on it. Moore has a weblog where people can send him hate mail: http://www.michaelmoore.com. It takes far less web research to find that than it does to uncover his unlisted home address. (Look at that esoteric blog title.) That pretty much covers the right to send a letter. Publishing his home address is an incitement to something more, up to and including violence. Just as publishing the unlisted home address of an abortion doctor would be. That’s why this story has legs. It was an incitement to violence against a man’s family by a group who pretends to speak on behalf of families. If it’s so innocent, let’s see Dobson publish his family’s “already-public” address in the domains where it will be read by his political enemies. And let’s see the right-wing bloggers put the address and pick-up times of their children’s daycare center on the blog sidebar, every day. After all, with enough archival fortitude anybody could figure it out anyway.

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 19:50:40 +0000

Really, this whole Michael Moore address thing is a non-issue – it was already public information and FOTF or any other group has a right to ask the readers of their email list to send him letters expressing their displeasure at his latest polemic.

I don’t agree with Joe Carter though in trying to compare this to outing a homosexual politician. A more apt comparison would be Michael Moore putting a camera outside Lucianne Goldberg’s living room and broadcasting it on the internet and his television show.

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 05:57:18 +0000

Niger thing fixed; good call, Paul.

By: Abiola Lapite

Abiola Lapite — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 04:30:22 +0000

——-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE——- Hash: SHA1 I see someone’s already beaten me to it – Niger and Nigeria are NOT the same country! ——-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE——- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32) – GPGshell v3.10 Comment: My Public Key is at the following URL: Comment: http://www.alapite.net/pgp/AbiolaLapite.txt iD8DBQFA72LGOgWD1ZKzuwkRAuRyAJ93X5iHW3h21WpZkTulL+fW43EsJQCfQwG2 VMRBafqRXCeSS8Ak9/jgHqY= =Ge5K——-END PGP SIGNATURE——-

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 00:57:47 +0000

i think you are missing out on the most important lessons of this intelligence fiasco with niger and the uranium. if you take what british intelligence has said to be true, and what will most likely be confirmed to be accurate in the butler report, then some other european agency spent three years surveilling a nuclear smuggling ring (one in which Saddam was involved). so the real questions are these: a) why was the cia unable to penetrate this smuggling ring itself or even know anything about it? b) why wasn’t this information passed on from the european agency to the cia?? is our cia that weak?? they got no pull at all in the intelligence community?? those are clear signs of an intelligence service being run poorly, and that’s the scandal. everything was going on behind our backs. that’s when today’s senate intelligence committee report comes into play. on iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, the only thing left to be said is that u.s. intelligence was unable to gather the available evidence that was out there to prove that saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons. the cia’s only document was a forgery and that just shows that they were duped, but we do not yet know by whom (is that tpm’s big secret??). and so it was the right thing to do for bush to rely on the uk’s intelligence. the uk was our ally and they supplied us with the information. what the hell is so wrong with that?

By: P O'Neill

P O'Neill — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 00:18:15 +0000

Get that typo on Niger/Nigeria—Crooked Timber runs a reputable operation, not some Condi “I didn’t read the footnotes” Rice shambles.

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 23:41:59 +0000

There ought to be a word for these kinds of arguments, in which one simultaneously displays and condemns hypocrisy. Hypocratastic? Hypercrisy?

By: mg

mg — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 22:01:36 +0000

Oh, and you’re right that I don’t have much support in my comments section. Most people think that FOTF’s actions were clearly evil and that “outing” is somehow justified. That is the hypocrisy that I was attempting to point out. By “most people” Joe means, of course, not “most people in my comments section,” because that would be a lie. No idea what he does mean. Who taught you to talk like this, Joe, GWB or Michael Moore?

By: Joe Carter

Joe Carter — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 21:57:16 +0000

While I could be wrong, I don’t think that the FOTF considered the danger that could be posed to Moore and his family by posting his address. Of course, any nut that wanted to harm him could have found it themselves. But there was no need to make it so readily available. That doesn’t seem too overheated to me. Sorry for the confusion but I was mainly referring to your comments section, not to a general outcry over the incident. By the way, I’m encouraged to see that you condemn the “outing” incidents. I think that such behavior should always be denounced no matter what end of the political spectrum it is coming from. Trust me, if someone on the Right pulls such a stunt I will be the first in line to denounce such behavior.