(UPDATE: Glenn has taken down the link to the post in question. We all make mistakes. Original post below the fold, edited somewhat.)
I really thought that I could get through the day without commenting on the accusations about John Kerry.
But good lord. There’s a blogger who’s pored through pictures of John Kerry’s interns. He’s found one who looks young, cute and blond, and listed her name and her (disconnected) phone number. (I’m not linking to it. I hope that he takes it down.)
This young woman isn’t running for office. She’s a real person, and there’s no excuse for invading her privacy. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that she’s involved with Kerry. I hope that she gets through these next few days with a sense of humor, because she’s going to need one.
You know why the blogosphere doesn’t get much respect from the traditional press? It’s not because we’re brave and iconoclastic and they resent our freedom. It’s because we pull jackass stunts like this, with no thoughts about the consequences.
Jesus.
{ 24 comments }
Ayjay 02.13.04 at 2:55 am
You’re absolutely right, Ted — but this is not only shameful, it’s pointlessly shameful. Presumably what Reynolds, and the idiot blogger he links to, want is to discredit Kerry. And maybe Kerry deserves to be discredited. But calling the attention of the whole internet to this one young woman — selected either at random or because said idiot blogger thinks she’s hot — adds nothing whatsoever to the attack on Kerry. It has no purpose, political or otherwise. It’s just mindless blogospherical vandalism.
Brad DeLong 02.13.04 at 3:00 am
Glenn Reynolds is not part of my karass. I recommend you make sure he is not part of yours either.
chun the unavoidable 02.13.04 at 3:08 am
Now if we could just say the same about Mankiw…
theCoach 02.13.04 at 3:10 am
delong is right. Reynolds long ago stopped being a net contributor to the world.
Brian 02.13.04 at 3:23 am
Well, looks like Reynolds took the item down. Although his posting it in the first place kinda writes and finishes the book on him, as far as I’m concerned. Amazing what intense partisanship does to people…scratch that, it’s not amazing. Predictable’s a better word.
praktike 02.13.04 at 3:33 am
man, and I thought the ketchup thing was bad.
norbizness 02.13.04 at 3:35 am
Good thing the National Enquirer link is still up on his site. I still had lingering questions about whether he was a worthless hack or not.
Well, no I didn’t.
dipnut 02.13.04 at 4:28 am
Presumably what Reynolds, and the idiot blogger he links to, want is to discredit Kerry.
…intense partisanship…
Of what party is Glenn a partisan, exactly? The party whose President he disses on a regular basis, and whose Attorney General he routinely calls a bum, and so on ad infinitum? No, you are the real partisans, who can’t conceive of anyone criticizing a Democrat without being a bought-and-paid-for operative. Instead of working up a lip-lather, you could just send Glenn an email when he posts something that bugs you. He took down this latest misdemeanor because someone did exactly that.
What part of “Insta-Pundit” do you not understand? Glenn works fast and deals in a fair amount of gossip, having to do with the personal and political fortunes of the governing class. He also revises and responds fast, giving bandwidth and exposure to people who disagree with him, and in this case removing something he regretted posting in the first place. He even apologized. Wow, what a vicious propagandist!
Irony: Crooked Timber is now the one high-traffic blog where you can learn there’s someone out there to harrass. As Glenn says, anyone can look this stuff up on Google…
[T]he blogosphere doesn’t get much respect from the traditional press…because we pull jackass stunts like this, with no thoughts about the consequences.
Actually, they hold us in contempt, because when it comes to jackass stunts, we are but amateurs and pikers.
neil 02.13.04 at 5:08 am
This is absolutely disgraceful. A new low for Reynolds. I am writing to MSNBC to demand that he be fired and I recommend that you all join me. It might not be a bad idea to write to UT as well and let them know what their so-called “law professor” is up to.
When you sink deeper into the slime than Drudge, it’s time to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror.
Brian 02.13.04 at 5:36 am
Dipnut:
Hey, it was a cheap shot. Seeing someone idly link to garbage like that kind of merits one; christ, it’s not like it requires a lot of soul-searching to realize that the post at the heart of this discussion was a stupid, zero-class thing to do. Or to continue doing; I have no idea if the point-post-and-giggle over pictures of interns is still going on, nor do I really care. Stumbling over net circle-jerks isn’t something I enjoy doing.
And I don’t speak for — and I’m not representative of — every single Democrat, much as I’d like to do.
——————–
Neil:
I think demanding that he be fired or whatever is too harsh. Everybody makes mistakes, everybody says and does stupid things online, and it’s not like Reynolds is hosting pictures or repeating phone numbers or anything like that. His link is gone, and to his credit it was gone quickly. Calling him stupid and avoiding his page works for me.
Prometheus 6 02.13.04 at 5:57 am
Frankly, I only find out about what Instapundit posts by reading how outraged he makes some of us.
He was the first blogger I read, and the second I categorized as a propagandist. He had some good stuff linked sometimes but finding it was like bobbing for apples in the sewer.
mc 02.13.04 at 8:10 am
Forgive my bluntness, but I don’t understand the problem.
First, why should you care about another website pulling a tabloid stunt? It’s not on your web site. Or is this the same kind of argument like “the internet doesn’t get respect because of paedophiles”? The “blogosphere” means nothing, you might as well start talking of a “mobilesphere” that includes everyone using a mobile. What they say on it has nothing to do with what they’re using.
The means of communication does NOT define the content.
Second thing I don’t get. Why, in 2004, do you still get upset if some US Presidential candidate had or might have had an affair or twenty?
If you don’t like the tabloid stunt, then at least you shouldn’t give a toss about the claim. If you care so much about both, then congratulations, you’re the perfect tabloid reader, so don’t complain! :D
Barry 02.13.04 at 2:08 pm
MC, Instapundit matters just like Rush matters. Too many people listen to each, and take them seriously.
asg 02.13.04 at 2:23 pm
I am glad Glenn removed the post. And let’s face it, Glenn is a lot less ideologically obsessed and partisan than most of CT’s contributors are.
Brian Weatherson 02.13.04 at 5:42 pm
I get the feeling asg thinks ‘partisan’ means ‘prominently endorses views I disagree with’, because that’s the only way Instapundit could be less partisan than most of us at CT – me being a possible exception ;)
Richard Vagge 02.13.04 at 8:03 pm
Instapundit links to Crooked Timber and DeLong. Crooked Timber and DeLong do not link to Instapundit. While this may not tell you everything you need to know, it says lot. It says that tolerance is a difficult thing and some can do it and some can not.
Can some one point to the baselines? What are the ideas that someone expresses that make all of their other pronoucement unexceptable? How does one get kicked out of the club? Please tell.
Brian Weatherson 02.13.04 at 8:37 pm
We, er, do link to Instapundit, under the law section. He just doesn’t get a headline billing. If we really wanted to be partisan I guess we’d (a) get rid of his link and (b) remove Volokh, OxBlog, Libertarian Samizdata and others from the ‘Lumber Room’. I think both those things would be mistakes, and there hasn’t been much uprising to do either around here.
Zizka 02.13.04 at 8:46 pm
“Forgive my bluntness, but I don’t understand the problem.
First, why should you care about another website pulling a tabloid stunt? It’s not on your web site.”
Please rewrite. This is not intelligible in its present form.
GMT 02.13.04 at 9:15 pm
No, you are the real partisans, who can’t conceive of anyone criticizing a Democrat without being a bought-and-paid-for operative.
I can. Do I get a cookie?
I seem to remember something about publishing a young woman’s personal information, rather than Democrats…
Oh, well, gone now. Noise too high, signal too low. Or maybe that was the idea.
Kieran Healy 02.13.04 at 9:31 pm
Instapundit links to Crooked Timber and DeLong. Crooked Timber and DeLong do not link to Instapundit. While this may not tell you everything you need to know, it says lot
It tells me someone needs to explore the “Find” function under his browser’s “Edit” menu.
Richard Vagge 02.13.04 at 9:34 pm
Brian, sorry about that. I didn’t notice the links on my first view and I was still mad about DeLong’s comment above and didn’t take a good enough look. But DeLong’s comment makes for a good example. I think that Brad DeLong is a big fat idiot(Apologies to Al Franken), but I read his blog every week. Why? Becasue no matter what I think of Brad, he writes about things that you’ve got think about and address. You don’t have to like someone to listen and you should listen to as many voices as possible.
Richard Vagge 02.13.04 at 9:36 pm
And what’s a “karass” anyway?
dipnut 02.13.04 at 10:54 pm
In the teachings of Bokonon (and the religion of Bokononism), a karass is a group of people who, wittingly or otherwise, share a particular destiny. No, that’s not quite right. Basically, the idea is that God has a plan, and the members of the karass ensure it goes forward. In Cat’s Cradle, the narrator’s karass fulfills God’s intention with hilarious results.
The karass “pivots” around a wampeter, a physical object essential to the plan. Any group of people which is not a karass (for instance, the maintainers of Crooked Timber) is a granfalloon. And all of this is foma, or lies.
As for Brad deLong, this “not part of my karass” business is his answer to everything. De-link, don’t read it, shut your ears, blah blah blah I’m not listening.
Whatever. Membership in any given karass is not a matter of choice.
msg 02.14.04 at 1:09 am
One comment, and only one, takes up the real person whose safety and privacy were threatened by the originating post, everybody else gets all frothy on procedural sanctions and definitional jots and tittles.
Anybody who’s spent more than 45 minutes on the ‘net knows there are rabid and nasty minds out there – a teeming, festering mass of them, actively seeking vulnerable targets.
To expose anyone to that sick horde, even potentially, who has in no wise sought out that exposure, is not just a breach of protocol, it’s criminal, it is the thing for which the designation of acts as crimes was first instituted.
Whether there are statutes that apply, or codes of etiquette and deportment, whether there is reciprocity of blog “presence”, is trivial beside that.
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