outing = bad

You probably have read by now that legal-intellectual-powerhouse Ed Whelan has outed Publius.

I don't like outing anybody for any reason whatsoever. I disapprove the outing of gay Republicans who publicly denounce homosexuality or push for laws that diminish their rights, which puts me at odds with some liberal blogs (cf. AMERICAblog).

If privacy is to have any value whatsoever, it includes the option to hide from view certain activities: Going to the racetrack to bet on the ponies. Purchasing Hustler magazine. Attending a church of a marginal religion. Etc.

Outing is part of a Puritan mindset that insists that everything be done on the public stage. Everything. So that the crowd can weigh in on this-or-that personal quirk or unpopular viewpoint that the subject exhibits. It's actually a primitive (and juvenile) social phenomenon that we can do without.

UPDATE: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House: (emp add)

Someday, someone is going to make a million by writing a book on what so far is largely unwritten; the rules and etiquette of blogging.

When that happens, we won’t have internet ignorant philistines like Ed Whelan running around destroying the anonymity of bloggers who choose to remain unknown. Or maybe we will, if they prove as unable to control their anger as Mr. Whelan has demonstrated. ...

Responding point by point to Publius’s piquing of Whelan’s demonstrably thin skin, the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center couldn’t leave it at that. Instead, he decided to act rather unethically and dig unto Publius’s personal life in order to discover who this mosquito nibbling on his backside might be. ...

Whelan obviously doesn’t get out much. Or read the news. He is certainly an ignoramus about blogging if he hasn’t read about the dozens of cases of people who have lost jobs, been stalked and threatened, or forced to give up writing by employers all due to their passion for blogging. ...

... there are a lot of good reasons for bloggers to remain anonymous and Ed Whalen has no right to decide differently just because he got steamed about someone’s response to his analysis. Did Publius commit a crime? Was he slandering Whalen? If not, Whalen’s fit of personal pique looks low, tawdry, childish, and vengeful. ...

So, through Whelan’s towering ignorance, he has outed someone for no good reason save his own sense of payback with still unknown consequences to a man he doesn’t know, who never did him any personal harm, and couldn’t affect his reputation one way or another even if that was his intent.

Yeah - way to go Ed. ...

I would recommend that Mr. Whelan familiarize himself with blogs and the nature of the beast before going off half cocked and making himself appear a vengeful, spiteful, small minded man. I lost far more respect for Whelan through his outing of Hilzoy than anything the blogger has written about him.

posted by Quiddity at 6/07/2009 08:10:00 AM