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Monday, March 30, 2009

They always forget that they work for us
Posted by Jill | 4:58 AM
Many of us start out blogging pseudonymously. We do it for many reasons, not least of which is a desire for privacy. Every job-hunting site out there tells you to look for your "digital dirt" -- things out on the internet that might reflect badly on you in a job hunt. Whether being a progressive blogger qualifies as "digital dirt" remains to be seen, and it's easy to say "Well, what I do on my own time is my own business" -- until you're laid off into a crappy job market. The problem is that for the most part, once something is out there, it tends to stay forever, even if only in the Wayback machine archive. Some of us start out pseudonymously and then after a period of time decide to reveal more of ourselves. A few people on my blogroll have done just that recently. I blog halfway pseudonymously, but enough people have linked to my full name that anyone looking for my "digital dirt" will find this blog. This was a huge concern while I was job hunting, but amazingly, I managed to be hired by a giant multinational corporation despite it (and I don't buy for one minute that they didn't check).

But the decision to "come out", as it were, ought to be the decision of the individual blogger, not that of politicians who don't like what we write. But that is exactly what's happened to AK Muckraker of Mudflats.

It takes guts to be a progressive blogger in Alaska, given the tendency of its Evita of the North to attempt to incite violence among her frothing minions. But AK Muckraker decided that Americans ought to know more about the governor of Alaska than the media narrative of "pretty hockey mom" that we were getting, and with a family and a life up there, decided to blog pseudonymously....until a DEMOCRATIC -- yes, Democratic -- local politician forgot that he's accountable to the people he serves, and decided to be a thug.

You see, it all started when an Alaska state representative, Mike Doogan, started receiving e-mails -- lots of them -- as part of a coordinated e-mail campaign. This happens all the time. Right now there's one to sponsors of Bill O'Reilly's show on our side of the fence, and the other side is constantly trying to get progressive voices shut down. I'm quite certain that Barney Frank gets his share of not just critical mail, but outright hate mail. This pissant little Alaska bantam rooster, however, decided that voicing one's opinion to someone who represents you in the statehouse is out of line, and started vowing revenge against the Alaska bloggers who pointed out that he's forgotten for whom he works. Avedon Carol explains what happened next.

If there was ever a time for another "I Am Spartacus" moment in Blogtopia, this is it. The last one was during the infamous Amanda Marcotte/Melissa McEwan firing by the John Edwards campaign (which ought to have told us everything we needed to know) at the behest of Catholic League lunatic Bill Donohue. It's time for another one. Because it doesn't matter to what party the politician belongs -- a thug is a thug is a thug. They work for us. And it's our job to make sure that they don't forget it. Skippy has some suggestions on what to do.

Tonight I'm going to try to get to my town's public council meeting. Mine is a single-party rule town where the mayor hasn't lived for the last two years -- and no one on the council asks him to resign. He gets paid to preside over a town in which he no longer has any interest. The Democratic party doesn't even run candidates. I don't plan to talk at this meeting. I just want them to know I'm paying attention.

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2 Comments:
Blogger Bob said...
My councilman needed a runoff election squeak out a two vote victory in a primary over an incumbent. Last wednesday night he was at the library, standing silently next to the mayor at a community meeting at the library. It was first time I'd seen him or heard of him in over two years. That was the mayor's meetup.
3/30/09, 8:49 AM  
Blogger Distributorcap said...
you get the town/state/country you pay for when you think britney is more important

i dont get the outing thing - i am having a tough time wrapping my head around it - why would he do it?

this is why papers are about to enter the dustbin...

just like i cannot figure what people see in Palin or Bachmann or Jindal

then again we are more concerned with the ShamWow arrest...
3/30/09, 8:57 AM  
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