Michelle Malkin Unhinged

Some goofballs at UC Santa Cruz protested military recruiters. This upset Michelle Malkin. Santa Cruz goofballs then issue press release which idiotically includes their home phone numbers. Upset Michelle Malkin links to this press release. Upset Michelle Malkin fans begin calling Santa Cruz goofballs promising to do all sorts of nasty things.

Caught up? Good. Because this is where the fun really begins.

I've had some experience with cyberstalkers. And as I've said , I have also had some experience with cyber-ethics.

If you want to grab the full story, then head over to Joe Gandleman's place and follow the links to the links to the links of all the sordid details including all the commentary. Some reasonable. Some expectedly nasty.

Here's the deal.

There is nothing wrong with posting a link to an item that has been published in public view. I've always believed that if you put something on the internet, even something personal, you have to expect that it is in the public domain and there will be a response. However, if someone accidentally sets their hair on fire and then ask for a little water, you don't hand them gasoline.

There was nothing wrong with Malkin linking the first time. I wouldn't do it, but my moral code in internet land is different.

But once the idiot kids realized their mistake and removed the phone numbers, Ms. Malkin should have let the dog lie and moved on to other things.

Linking to a cached page that still contained the numbers was probably over the line.

Linking to pages with cut and paste copies of the phone numbers, because the idiot kids figured out how to purge the cached pages, crosses over into creepy.

It's just wrong. Ms. Malkin is aware of the blog storm that this has created. She is also aware that her many "fans" have called the phone numbers and promised all sorts of heinous actions. In all fairness, she has posted a karmic band-aid disclaimer that she doesn't support death threats.

In the blog world, links are currency. Ms. Malkin's blog is very popular. She understands as well as anyone that it is a potential link gateway for the crazy, batty and even dangerous. A degree of responsibile caution would be adult.

So what was Ms. Malkin's response? To post copies of emails she received from lunatics and trolls. I'll tell you something anyone who has been on these internets for any length of time already knows. The day everyone starts receiving phone calls every 30 seconds promising the latest penis enhancing / financial growth / easy mortgage pill is the day we can compare publishing someone's home phone number to revealing selected screeds sent to a publicly available email address.