politics anonymous
“This is the same, tired, old story, centering around a tax-and-spend approach to relief of poverty. If most of the north County poor population would learn English and stop getting pregnant before age 20, then they might deserve some more tax money from south County.” –Anonymous, posted on “Blogabarbara”
“It is so clear that Das (Williams) cares about Das and nothing else.”
-Anonymous, posted on “Blogabarbara”
Many months back, a group of political junkies and insiders here in Santa Barbara threw up a blog and started posting snarky, sometimes funny and sometimes insightful missives about local politics. Titled “blogabarbara”, the site quickly gained a huge readership and a vibrant coterie of commenters. Hiding behind clever, street-name pseudonyms, the blogmasters railed against our often less than stellar local press, and some of the less principled members of the local political establishment. The politics of the blog is centrish Santa Barbara Democrat, hostile to rampant growth, but also hostile to any real progress on economic justice.
It’s great that such a thing exists. Despite my political differences with the hosts, and the fact that they’ve taken a few swipes at yours truly, I think that we need just such a forum. I don’t, however, think that it should be anonymous.
Don’t get me wrong. Anonymity is a fun thing. It allows you to call names and spew vitriol with no accountability. You can hide any interests you have in the topic, and never seem self-serving. It’s like the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut. You get to put on a mask and screw whoever you want to without any consequences. However, in a town as small as ours, when a good portion of the political elites is thrilled to read an ongoing commentary about themselves, a forum which encourages anonymous mudslinging is irresponsible.
It’s also frustrating for people who put themselves in the public eye in order to move a political agenda forward. There are always armchair pundits out there who spread gossip and talk trash, I’ve been known to talk a little myself down at my local. However, putting that low level of discourse up on the web is no good for anyone, and allowing people to post anonymously does just that.
Why provide a forum for someone to hurl invective like the examples above and not even sign it? More importantly, how can someone respond to personal attacks, like the one leveled against County Supervisor candidate Das Williams, when the attacker is unidentified. Poor Das keeps valiantly and politely wading into the online crapstorms, only to be followed up by anonymous post after anonymous post attacking his character. Why do people deserve a forum to attack people anonymously? Of course, they have the –right- to, but is it a good thing for the polity? We don’t have to do everything that the internet makes possible.
Any Santa Barbarans or Blogabarbarans care to weigh in?
posted by daraka kenric at 4:52 p.m.
5 Comments:
I'd post a comment, but can I do it anonymously?
I think you should take Blogabarbara for what it is. Anonymity allows people to post things that maybe they would not say otherwise - for good and for ill. I find it often boring, but occasionally entertaining to read. Mine it for gold, though you may find very little.
Mary Anne
torsdag, januar 19, 2006 12:24:00 p.m.
As a former Santa Barbaran and active political blogger, I think Daraka makes an excellent point.
The truth is that the days of anonymous commenting are really long gone from the political blogosphere. It's not surprising that Blogabarbara is so far behind, but that doesn't make it OK.
Given just how bad things are at the News-Press editorial page, I understand the desire for the blog itself to be anonymous. The people actually running the blog, putting in time to write actual at least semi-thoughtful posts, have some leeway in my mind not using their real names. But a bunch of random jerks with too much time on their hands have no right to mouth off hateful and horrible things without putting a name to their comments.
It's completely unacceptable.
torsdag, januar 19, 2006 8:39:00 p.m.
i think a forum to hurl invective at someone is both fun and appropriate. what's inappropriate is someone who is an elected official demanding to know which one of its citizen's is speaking poorly of him. it could be that some jackass has a personal vendetta against das and there's no basis for the attack. but couldn't it also be a voter who is dissatisfied with das williams performance as his/her elected official and wants to vent about it. no it's not necessarily productive, but it's not like this person is leaking photoshopped pictures of das doing blow with kate moss (although, that would actually make me more likely to vote for him), and it is definitely not inappropriate. this person just was calling das a little self centered...and the truth is, we all are a little self-centered.
p.s. das if you're reading this, my tap water still tastes like shit. where's my clean water?
fredag, januar 20, 2006 7:11:00 p.m.
I feel like I have some understanding of the rationale behind Blogabarbara's anonymity, or at least why I was excited about it as an experiment. Jen touched on this but I'm not sure she went far enough: it's the News-Press editorial page. Over the four years I lived there I was probably present at 15 or 20 strategy meetings where we talked about fixing the News-Press somehow (sometimes that's ALL we talked about!), but, perfectly undestandably, no one with anything to lose wanted to stick their necks out.
So in theory, it was yet another platform to try to counterveil the NP. At least that's what I was hoping it would be...but it seems like it's turned into yet another voice in favor of afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. That's certainly disappointing, but I'm not at all sure de-anonymizing the thing would fix it.
The thing about the ugly-ass comments is that that energy is out there, whether we can see it or not. It's a little like the disturbing number of anti-immigrant rants you run into while phone banking. I suppose I'd rather know that energy exists than not - although the case could be made that when people see that kind of language it makes them think it's OK.
Overall it makes me think the answer to what seems like "too much" free speech is just MORE free speech...and choosing not to be anonymous unless we have a very, very good reason to do so.
søndag, januar 22, 2006 12:19:00 p.m.
Instead of getting flustered with indignation, why not just respond to the points in the actual comment posted at blogabarbara:
“This is the same, tired, old story, centering around a tax-and-spend approach to relief of poverty. If most of the north County poor population would learn English and stop getting pregnant before age 20, then they might deserve some more tax money from south County.”
Would learning English and ending teenage pregnancy really lift those people out of poverty? Or will you play the race card yet again instead of thinking the dependent people have any responsibility for themselves?
mandag, februar 06, 2006 8:45:00 p.m.
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