Wednesday, April 26, 2006

More Wikipedia Madness?

First we have an attempted Wikipedia smear in the Georgia Governor's race.

Has it now happened in the Florida Governor's race?

In the thread Politics of Flash Dancing commentor Sara points out there are some interesting passages in candidate Charlie Crist's Wikipedia entry.

If you search the history portion of the entry, you have this little nugget being added on April 16th:

"While the Florida media has reported on the existence of unsubstantiated but loud rumors regarding the divorced Crist's sexual preference, he has now stated repeatedly that he is heterosexual."


Echoes of Rove's push polling against McCain in 2000 South Carolina primaries?

Any way you slice it, unsubstantiated rumors do not belong any Wikipedia. If childish politics end up ruining one of the greatest web resources ever, we should all grab our pitchforks, torches and toss all the scoundrels out.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This isn't new. Wikipedia banned some Capitol Hill IP addresses for awhile because staffers were doing all kinds of evil partisan editing. I guess it's a tactic that has finally trickled down.

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/wikipedia/call-for-submissions-151551.php

-Ilsa

griftdrift said...

Well Ms. Snark, even those of us out here in the boonies were aware of the Hill staffer shenanigans. But you are right. These are the first two state campaign infractions I have heard of.

And tell your friends at Wonkette to stop stealing my stuff!

I had Crist first dammit!

Anonymous said...

I didn't mean to be snarky, I just thought maybe you hadn't heard about Wikipedia banning Hill-based IPs. I'm sorry.

griftdrift said...

No need to apologize.

Just send naughty pictures instead.

Anonymous said...

OK, they're on the way...

Button Gwinnett said...

Actually in the Cox case, Morton Brilliant isn't a Republican. He's a Democratic strategist and has worked on Democratic campaigns in South Carolina and Washington state. I've seen that being spread over several blogs by a college student and Taylor supporter claiming to be a former intern for Cathy.

He's being confused with Dan Ponder, the former Republican state representative who is Cathy's campaign manager. Ponder is the moderate who made the impassioned speech in the House that is generally given credit for Georgia passing its Hate Crimes law in the late 90's. He's still one of the most sought after speakers by both parties as well as non partisan groups for the cause of hate crimes legislation and race relations all over the country.