A Life Sentence For Kids Who Commit SpeechCrime?

After the presidential election, there were a lot of angry people on the internet, and a lot of racist tweets about the president. Some of these racist things were tweeted by kids.

Adults who express violent or racist sentiments are one thing.

But should teenagers who say stupid things on the internet be 'outed' to their schools and peers, and should their youthful history always show up on any google search of their name forever and ever?

Gawker sub-site 'Jezebel' seems to think so.

Morrissey collected the offensive tweets, along with the names of the students (the majority of whom are assumedly younger than 18 ), a gleeful accounting of the activities they’d likely list on college applications — such as their sports teams and pageants — their schools, the responses from school officials — the few who responded expressed disapproval — and the news that in most cases, the student had since deleted their Twitter account.

A deliberate effort seems to have been made to make sure this information shows up in a google search of these kids' names, for years to come.

Calling the president terrible names is a crime that should haunt people- even rash children- for the rest of their lives? Okay. You're about ten years too late, but okay, I'm game.

Did Jezebel do similar legwork to 'out' the people threatening to riot if Obama lost the election? Physical threats seem a bit more dire than name-calling, no?

How about the Bush-haters on Twitter and elsewhere? Certainly we know that many, many vicious thoughts were uttered about Dubya- including assassination fantasies. No Jezebel expose on that? Curious.

More to the point: have right-wing sites ever persecuted young kids who tweeted mean things about George Bush, John McCain, or Mitt Romney? No. They have not.

Not yet.

Is this really the kind of investigative journalism Jezebel wants to encourage, or become famous for? Where kids are subject to being haunted for the rest of their lives by the stupid things they did and said while in their formative years?

We need to stop pussyfooting around, and establish definitely that punishing children for ThoughtCrime is now an acceptable function of the political operatives who pretend to be journalists.

Because, we can go there. If they want to go there, we can do that too.
We are not required to behave honorably to opponents who are so bugfucking cuckoo for a politician now, that they can't hold their fire from young kids.

I hate to point this out, but: leftists have kids who misbehave and act stupidly in public, too.

This is the world you live in, kids. Everything you say in public — and even private — forums on the Internet has the potential to go more public and to become a permanent part of your Google footprint. Stupid, offhand remarks at 16 may mean you don’t get a job at 26.

Noted.

Tipster Spongeworthy:

Did those rags at Gawker really contact the schools these dumbass kids attend? They should be shunned for this—it isn’t Gawker’s job to rat these kids out. That isn’t journalism or even advocacy.

Yeah, I'm over the whole 'journalism' aspect. There is no such thing, and the sooner we embrace this new reality of ruthless Total Political War, the better.

Let's get on to the whole 'sauce for the gander' chapter of this saga, because that's where the action is now, frankly.

Thanks to Spongeworthy.

posted by Laura. at 07:08 PM

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