Tuesday, October 2, 2007

October Fools' Day, Part I: A Respected Take on "e-Taggers"

My friend Jonathan Bernstein, who publishes a very interesting e-letter on crisis communications (subscribe at http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/newsletter.html) had this to say in today's issue:

JUST A THOUGHT


"The Internet has spawned a new breed of taggers who insist on making their mark on any blog that will have them, just to see their own words in print. They typically persist in disrupting otherwise civil discourse through obnoxious and often incoherent rambling, secure in the delusion that they are merely exercising freedom of speech."

e-Tagging is the equivalent of the random graffiti we tend to see on many flat surfaces, mobile or immobile, urban, suburban, or rural. People defend the affixing of tags to physical structures with the same reason for e-tagging: They are merely exercising their right to free speech.
Jonathan's "thought" sparked in me a long-remembered free speech quotation from my seventh-grade civics class: "What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to." (Hansell B. Duckett)

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