{"id":2085,"date":"2009-06-09T07:15:16","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T07:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2009-06-09T07:15:16","modified_gmt":"2009-06-09T07:15:16","slug":"whelan_was_wron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2085","title":{"rendered":"Whelan Was Wrong To Apologize For Outing Publius"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nSo I’ve been watching the dust clouds of the Halloween-style egg fight between Ed Whelan and Publius which culminated today in Whelan apologizing to Publius for outing him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And I’ve been mulling this over more than a bit – particularly as a formerly pseudonymous blogger myself – and I think Whelan was mistaken in apologizing (at least to the extent he did). Here’s what I read that made me decide this<\/a> after some thinking.<\/p>\n

It’s the post from the ‘poor me’ post that Publius (nee John Blevins) put up ‘fessing up and explaining all the reasons why it was important to him to blog under a pseudonym.<\/p>\n

Now when I first went into this, I have to admit that Publius wasn’t a blogger whose work I could immediately put into a frame, and so my initial (wrong) reaction was that he was a poo-flinging monkey like tbogg<\/a>, and my thought on his being outed was ‘fair cop.’ Live by the poo, die by it,<\/i> I said to myself…<\/p>\n

But because I tend to try to check my facts before I take positions, I took some time and read a bunch of publius’ work, and he’s in a whole different ballpark, league, sport than folks like that. He’s a serious blogger, albeit an aggressive liberal, and someone whose posts I’ve read and admired in the past.<\/p>\n

But having said that, I think that he’s got it completely backward when he talks about why it was important to him to blog under a nom de plume. Here’s what he said:<\/p>\n

As I told Ed (to no avail), I have blogged under a pseudonym largely for private and professional reasons. Professionally, I’ve heard that pre-tenure blogging (particularly on politics) can cause problems. And before that, I was a lawyer with real clients. I also believe that the classroom should be as nonpolitical as possible – and I don’t want conservative students to feel uncomfortable before they take a single class based on my posts. So I don’t tell them about this blog. Also, I write and research on telecom policy – and I consider blogging and academic research separate endeavors. This, frankly, is a hobby.<\/p>\n

Privately, I don’t write under my own name for family reasons. I’m from a conservative Southern family – and there are certain family members who I’d prefer not to know about this blog (thanks Ed). Also, I have family members who are well known in my home state who have had political jobs with Republicans, and I don’t want my posts to jeopardize anything for them (thanks again).<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He wrote under a pseudonym to shield himself from the consequences of his words. I think that’s exactly backwards.<\/p>\n

When I started writing as Armed Liberal – in my very first post – I wrote that<\/p>\n

I’m choosing not to identify myself … right now … for a variety of reasons. I’ll start by standing on the time-honored tradition of anonymous pamphleteering, which I believe blogging fits neatly into. My significant other has a fairly political job (although she doesn’t believe so). And finally, I’m trying to disassociate the value of what is set out here from any judgment you might make about me.<\/b><\/p>\n

[emphasis added]<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn’t believe it was as important to shield myself (and mine) from what I wrote as it was to have what I wrote stand on its own. I’m not insensitive – and I wasn’t in 2002 – to the concern that what I wrote might have an impact on my living or on my life.<\/p>\n

But first and foremost for me it was a vehicle to put ideas forth deprived of any claim to authority (I was a student of Sheldon Wolin and John Schaar! I’m someone who works inside the process and can explain it!).<\/p>\n

And when my real life and my blogging life intersected in a meaningful way, I dropped the pseud and stepped out.<\/p>\n

So it bothers me more than a little that the primary defense that Publius wants to mount is that it might impact his work or hurt his family’s feelings.<\/p>\n

It especially bothers me when he says that<\/p>\n

And yes – I criticized Whelan rather harshly. But that’s what the blogosphere is about. Blogging is not for the thin-skinned. And you would think that someone who spends their days trying to destroy other people’s reputations in dishonest and inflammatory ways wouldn’t be so childish and thin-skinned.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sorry, but pitchers who throw at the head shouldn’t be shocked when an occasional bat comes loose and soars out toward the mound. People who see the root of blogging as critcising people harshly and offending where they can do forfeit some of the claim to courtesy which is really what weak pseudonymity (it wouldn’t be too hard to track down any of the pseudonymous political bloggers, really) is really all about.<\/p>\n

So on both of those counts – because I think he was making the claim to pseudonymity for the wrong reasons, and because I think that what he really regrets losing is the freedom to throw elbows and then go sit innocently at his family table, I – a formerly pseudonymous blogger – think that Whelan committed a minor infraction of manners at worst.
\n–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal (formerly pseudonymous) disagrees with the consensus that Ed Whelan deeply wronged blogger Publius by outing him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}