Recent events have made me rethink the way we do things around here. I think it's time for a few policy changes.
I've been doing this blog for almost two years. I've never, as far as I can remember, deleted a post, except for maybe a couple that I pulled down after being up less than a couple of minutes when I realized I'd gotten something totally wrong. Archived here and always searchable through Google are a lot of things I've written. I make frequent use of four letter words. At various times I've been accused of being homophobic, racist, anti-religion, anti-Semitic. I've regularly been lambasted for failing to be Patriotically Correct for not expressing the legislated degree of sympathy and/or outrage over whatever it is I'm supposed to be upset or outraged about that day. I've written some stupid things. I've expressed plenty of things in a too-sloppy fashion. And, hey, I'm sure sometimes I've just been dead wrong. I also have a mostly unmoderated comments section which is, uh, rather "lively." The point is there's plenty of ammunition out there.
I thought we were all grownups now. Years later, I thought we'd all figured out sort of how this magic new gizmo called the internet worked. I thought we all understood that a linking to website does not hold you responsible for all of the content there. I thought we understood that an ad placed on a media outlet - including blogs and other websites - was not an implicit endorsement of all of the content found on those sites. That isn't to say that there's no association between linker and linkee, or between advertiser and the content on a media outlet, but it's a fairly loose one. Meaning that it's reasonable to associate an advertiser with the overall tone and content of their chosen outlet, without making them responsible for every single word uttered.
I'm an activist. Right now I want the Democrats to take back at least one branch of government. For awhile it seemed that some complementarity between the independent "netroots" and campaigns and other organizations would serve everybody well. But, if these people are unable to find a way to not let themselves be tarred-by-association by anything I write, then these relationships just aren't helpful. And, from my perspective I don't want to worry about what I write for fear it's going to get a candidate in trouble simply because they posted up an ad on my website.
People can advertise with or not, and link to or not, any blog they want. But, if we haven't grown up enough to realize that one stupid retracted comment posted by a blogger in the comments section of someone else's diary post on that blog deserves absolutely no official written response by a campaign - no matter how offensive it is - then I don't think we're grown up enough yet to have blog/campaign complementarity. The Kerry campaign is now operating on the standard that they are responsible for the comments made by any blogger they link to, and in fact will allow themselves to be forced into commenting on any transgressions. They're trying to get their guy elected, and they're going to do what they think is necessary (I'll let others judge the wisdom), but it shows they're not ready to really have a blog and interact with the rest of the blog world. They should just pull down all their links.
So, here are the changes. First, I'm going to pull all my "special fundraising relationships." By that I mean dedicated donation pages or links which track donations from this site. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying to help candidates raise money, or make suggestions about where your money might be well-spent, but I will stop "taking credit" in any official way. Second, I'm going to stop taking any new ads from individual candidates. I'll still take ads from organizations, as they're probably "diffuse" enough to avoid this kind of controversy. Third, I'm going to request the Kerry campaign take down my link. I don't want to be a part of the next "Kerry controversy of the week."
Obviously, this is going to make doing this much less fun and possibly much less lucrative, but right now I think it's the appropriate thing to do. Dick Cheney goes on the Rush Limbaugh show, all politicians regularly chat with Don Imus and Mike Barnicle, and no one's demanding that they distance themselves from every single utterance they make or, for the most part, demanding they stop appearing with them. Brit Hume and others on the right regularly trivialize the deaths of soldiers in Iraq by (incorrectly) comparing their deaths with domestic crime rates, traffic accidents, etc... But, for some reason there are still different standards for this crazy thing called the internet - and once again we've proven that the Right can create a controversy out of nothing, and sadly much of the Left piles on with them. And, once again we've demonstrated there are different standards for Left and Right - a certain prominent blogger has mocked the deaths of UN workers in Iraq, called for collective punishment for Palestinians, and nudge-nudge wink-wink endorsed terrorism against Europeans. No advertisers yet pulled as far as I can tell.
Anyway, I may change my mind about all of this at some future date. But, we'll be playing this game once per week until November unless people wise up. I'd hope that eventually our team will realize that once they cave into the Right's fake outrage-of-the-week, they'll just keep coming back, but until they do....
Matt Stoller has more.
...Talk Left has more, though I don't think Jeralyn should fall for Instapundit's plausible deniability schtick...
...one more thing - I don't think people should be angry at John Kerry about this. I truly hope that Kerry has better things to do than make decisions like this, and I doubt he's even heard of this little brouhaha.
