There’s been a lot of talk lately in the ’sphere about how anonymous you really are just because you use a nom de plume, an alias or “anon” when writing and commenting on the Internet.

I mentioned here that lefty blogger “Publius” had been outed by NRO columnist Ed Whelan. Dr. Dawg (who everyone knows is John in real life, but nobody really bothers him about it) and I had a little conversation about it here, where he felt that outing Arnie as Blazing Cat Fur was ok, but that Whelan outing Publius was not. I’m still not entirely clear on where Dawg stands. After all, there was absolutely no hue or cry from the Canadian lefty-sphere when Kinsella outed Arnie, but plenty when this Publius fellow became a real person.

Another recurring rant from the left in Canada is over National Post contributor and blogger Raphael Alexander. His real name, but not his full name. The fact that he publishes as Raphael Alexander as opposed to whatever his full name is proves…. absolutely nothing, actually, but Kinsella and all the other cynics on the left seem to think it’s part of a vast right wing conspiracy of lies. Not that Kinsella is giving up the real name of his so-called Grit Girl. Just sayin’.

As for me, I was “outed” in January 2006, entirely by accident and with no malice intended. It was an email from CPAC organizers in the US who were listing bloggers who had spots on “Bloggers’ Alley” at the convention that February. Oops. I never thought to ask them for anonymity, and therefore I didn’t get any. Honest mistake. Since then, it has been pretty much common knowledge that I am Wendy Sullivan. In fact, it’s on the About page. If I’m not willing to back up my words with my name, maybe I ought to shut up.

The fact is though, every Tom, Rob or John can comment or blog under an alias, and feel perfectly safe that they are immune from having to take responsibility for their words, however hateful. Except… that’s not really true anymore.

Connie and Mark Fournier are currently fighting to protect the anonymity of the commenters on Free Dominion. Richard Warman is pleading his case that the Fourniers’ commenters are “hateful” and “libelous” and therefore their ISP information should be turned over toute de suite and we can’t wait one more day!

Except who is the arbiter of hate? Who decides what is offensive? If you repeatedly refer to a 78 year old grandmother as a “cunt” on the Internet, isn’t that hateful? If you repeatedly malign and demean women who disagree with you, à la Sarah Palin, you need a crash course in decency, my friend.

Richard Warman will probably win - he always wins. And when he does, some of his cheerleaders may want to take a very hard look at some of what they’ve written so anonymously. They may want to spend some quality time with their hand over the “delete” key. Not to erase the past, of course - Google is all-knowing, and all-remembering - but to mitigate some of the fallout.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Blogging, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.