Stuart Blog 2: January 2006

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Re: Babies and Bathwater in Callahan's Cleveland Diary

Re: Babies and Bathwater

It's my understanding that Russo is more than just a participant in these Meet The Bloggers events. He's an organizer, right? No politician should support a forum where they're only probably going to be treated with respect. Brown and his campaign may not honestly be concerned with the civility of the MTB forum. They may be angry or bitter. But a rational mistrust of MTB is perfectly reasonable based on what I know. And MTB and the NEO blogosphere should be very concerned about that.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Meet the Bloggers tempest

Tim Russo spewed obscenity. Apparently this isn't questioned by anyone and I can't imagine what reasonable defense there might be. The myriad other issues being analyzed in such great detail by the NEO blogosphere are all distractions. I'm curious about Brown's role in the original incident. It would certainly have a bearing on his fitness for office but it shouldn't have any bearing on Russo's place in Meet The Bloggers. A journalist, or a blogger with journalistic aspirations, shouldn't be dragged into yelling and obscenity. An assistant of Brown's called to cancel. The assistant was polite and made it very clear that the Brown campaign valued the goals of Meet The Bloggers. I can't think of one reason to fault the Brown campaign in this incident. Running for office should involve engaging in civil discourse about issues. When someone has shown that they can't be trusted to communicate that way there's no point in showing the courage to face them.

Whatever Brown's culpability, his judgment will come in the voting booths. Russo's should come before this ridiculously unprofessional behavior tarnishes the credibility of Meet The Bloggers. If Tim Russo is involved in Meet The Bloggers then I think that I may cancel, too.

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