RE: OBAMA’S WAR ON CHRISTMAS
Dec. 7th, 2009 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogBy now you’ve probably heard the one about Russell Wiseman, the mayor of Arlington, TN, who said on his Facebook page that it’s a fact Obama intentionally scheduled his Afghan Surge Speech to pre-empt A Charlie Brown Christmas on account of he’s “our Muslim president” who has turned America into a Muslim nation that hates Christianity.
Nothing new there, of course. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) says stuff like that on Fox News every chance she gets – which is at least once a week, I think.
What interests me more is that some of the people leaping to Wiseman’s defense are using the following arguments (besides the usual “Obama is SO a Muslim” jabbering):
1. Wiseman has a First Amendment right to say what he wants, so if you criticize what he says yr stamping all over his right to free speech (also known as the Bill O’Reilly Defense).
2. He said it on Facebook, not in public, so it’s not like he said it in his capacity as Mayor because he was saying it privately.
The first point is pretty easily dismissed as batshit nonsense, not to mention wildly hypocritical and legally dubious. The second point, however, raises some interesting issues regarding the nature of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites – especially as regards to public officials, who as a rule are subject to different expectations and rules when it comes to public vs private comments.
There’s always been this notion that whatever happens on Facebook stays on Facebook, and that Facebook posts are the equivalent of a private conversation. It doesn’t, and it isn’t. If yr communicating via message or chat, you could say it’s private. If yr posting on yr wall or status update where all yr friends can read it, that’s another story. Sure, the “friends” are there by invitation-only, but when you’ve got 1,600+ “friends” and yr the mayor of a town of 5,000 people, that’s an audience.
So I don’t buy the argument that Wiseman is entitled to make political statements without the inconvenience of public criticism just because he posted it on Facebook. In meatspace, we are all responsible for what we say/write in public. And if it’s libel, we can be sued for it. (And there’s already precedent for that on Facebook.)
That doesn’t mean you can’t say whatever you want – but it does mean that you have to be willing to own up to to what you say and accept the risk that people will respond unfavorably. That goes double for politicians who we vote into positions of power and influence. And it doesn’t magically change if the speech is in the form of a Facebook post.
Smile when you say that,
This is dF
Nothing new there, of course. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) says stuff like that on Fox News every chance she gets – which is at least once a week, I think.
What interests me more is that some of the people leaping to Wiseman’s defense are using the following arguments (besides the usual “Obama is SO a Muslim” jabbering):
1. Wiseman has a First Amendment right to say what he wants, so if you criticize what he says yr stamping all over his right to free speech (also known as the Bill O’Reilly Defense).
2. He said it on Facebook, not in public, so it’s not like he said it in his capacity as Mayor because he was saying it privately.
The first point is pretty easily dismissed as batshit nonsense, not to mention wildly hypocritical and legally dubious. The second point, however, raises some interesting issues regarding the nature of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites – especially as regards to public officials, who as a rule are subject to different expectations and rules when it comes to public vs private comments.
There’s always been this notion that whatever happens on Facebook stays on Facebook, and that Facebook posts are the equivalent of a private conversation. It doesn’t, and it isn’t. If yr communicating via message or chat, you could say it’s private. If yr posting on yr wall or status update where all yr friends can read it, that’s another story. Sure, the “friends” are there by invitation-only, but when you’ve got 1,600+ “friends” and yr the mayor of a town of 5,000 people, that’s an audience.
So I don’t buy the argument that Wiseman is entitled to make political statements without the inconvenience of public criticism just because he posted it on Facebook. In meatspace, we are all responsible for what we say/write in public. And if it’s libel, we can be sued for it. (And there’s already precedent for that on Facebook.)
That doesn’t mean you can’t say whatever you want – but it does mean that you have to be willing to own up to to what you say and accept the risk that people will respond unfavorably. That goes double for politicians who we vote into positions of power and influence. And it doesn’t magically change if the speech is in the form of a Facebook post.
Smile when you say that,
This is dF
