2008 Primaries, Speeches, wispundits • October 30th, 2008

Too much information

by Chris Lato

This is the danger of blogs: throwing your views out there for the world to see and your enemies to save.

Later, those enemies will undoubtedly try to turn those words against you if you decide to run for public office.

Jo Egelhoff, a Republican running for the Assembly in the Fox Valley, is getting a taste of that now.

I’m not saying this is necessarily true in Egelhoff’s case, but blogging can lead to some columns that are not always fully thought-out, and are typically unedited by a level-headed third party.

It is a byproduct of the blogging/MySpace age - a time when, for some reason, people feel compelled to dump every last unfiltered detail of their lives onto the web– their photos, their ramblings, what they had for breakfast this morning.

Just like anyone interviewing for that new job should probably take down those MySpace photos of last weekend’s big drunken party, if you think there’s even a chance that you will run for office, my recommendation is that you think long and hard about what you’re putting out there.

I’m not saying don’t do it, but consider every posting – how you are wording your opinions, whether your thoughts are clear and articulate or inflammatory, etc. Even having another pair of eyes review your postings isn’t such a bad idea.

Something similar is happening on a much larger scale in the tight US Senate race in neighboring Minnesota, where ‘humorist’ and alleged carpetbagger Al Franken has to defend decades of very public material, from writings and appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ to his infamous column in ‘Playboy,’ to his stint as the left’s version of Rush Limbaugh on Air America radio.

Franken is an attack dog, no two ways about it. Nothing wrong with that – but now it is up to voters to decide whether all that material paints an accurate picture and, further, is that someone they want representing them in the Senate. It is a fair point of debate and criticism from the other side. How Franken – and Egelhoff – respond to such criticism and defend their writings will be telling as well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 8:35 am and is filed under 2008 Primaries, Speeches, wispundits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.