Palin for President
It had to happen eventually:
Sphere: Related ContentWhat was DailyKos Thinking?
Barack Obama has rightly condemned the vicious rumours peddled about Sarah Palin’s family life.
Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president. “And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off limits.
Someone else on the blogosphere said it, but I can’t remember who it was, that bringing his own circumstances in there was above and beyond the call of duty. We can at least be thankful for his decency in the matter.
But now that the dust has settled on this rather ignominious episode of what has otherwise been an exhilarating campaign so far, we can start to look at the implications and consequences.
First, this highlights the danger of the new medium of the internet: a rumour based on little more than the uninformed opinion of someone looking at a photograph spread across the internet like wildfire and led to a completely unwarranted invasion of the private life of the Palin family. I know Guido thinks that the mainstream media exercises too much restraint, but this shows that this is not a binary question, but one of drawing a line. Where stories risk severely tarnishing the reputation of someone else, there should at least be a degree of fact-checking before we hit the “publish” button.
News media has followed an inexorable trend towards ever-faster news. It is however acknowledged that such progress also brings with it pitfalls.
I am not a fan of outside regulation of the internet: its status as a bastion of free speech is too precious to be spoilt. That does not however give us free rein to publish whatever we like with no consideration for other factors. The right of free speech has always entailed the duty to exercise it responsibly: if bloggers wish to avoid calls for outside regulation, they must learn to self-regulate. Getting the news first at any cost is not of benefit to the public discourse.
What worries me about this incident is that stories such as these have little public interest, yet massively damaging consequences. Public morality does not come into it: if you really wanted to preserve the morals of the nation, you would not be publishing this information.
The rumour bears an unpleasant resemblance to the ones that dogged McCain in 2000. Then, you may recall, the Arizona Senator’s adopted daughter Bridget, was accused of being the product of an affair. She only discovered this upon googling herself. No parent should have to have such a conversation about their child like that, and no child should be subjected to such vicious mudslinging. Imagine what Bristol Palin will have to say to her child on the day they decide, innocently enough, to google herself?
DailyKos owe the Palin family an apology. There was no public interest in this story.
UPDATE: The Spectator has picked up on the story, pointing out that the McCain campaign are planning on a “with friends like these” counter-attack. This may yet become an even bigger own-goal for Democrat bloggers.
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