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Sunday, October 08, 2006
Wild Bill, someone else and Passionate America
Following up on my Wild Bill post from yesterday.
History:
Once upon a time there was this thing called the Foley FireStorm. A political figure that sent some "overly friendly" emails, that even the FBI thought was too insignificant to investigate further, to some young pages. Ages of the pages are still being hashed out, but so far, none have been "proven" to be under the legal age of the states this incident happened in.
Jump to the present:
Congress, the FBI and I believe the justice department, as well as state agencies are now investigating Foley, because NOW, instant messages have been revealed, (right before election time) that are far more than just overly friendly. We have many opinions on this, ranging from the Speaker of the house "should have investigated the earlier emails" (even though the FBI didn't even think it worth their time) to, was this all a set up before elections because the Democrats couldn't fight on the actual issues that face the country, so they turned it into a sexual scandal to divert the publics attention from other problems facing our country.
Now let us take a look at the fallout, not just politically, but from the blogging world.
We have some damn good investigative work done by Ms Underestimated and Wild Bill from Passionate America, where they did the actual legwork and found out more information on this, than most any other news agency OR blogger.
We have other bloggers condemning Wild Bill for taking the time to find out some actual information, information that has brought new things to light. Now I am not going to post to the blogger in question, because unlike Wild Bill, I am NOT as nice and will not give them more hits by simple virtue of having to slam a man for his hard work.
What I am going to ask is this: Is he being condemned because of jealousy? Because he was able to find information that no one else could? Is there a reason people use the information he and Ms Underestimated found, write about it, get exposure from it, yet refuse to credit them for THEIR HARD WORK? Jealousy is the answer I keep coming back to.
Fact is, as any journalism student or newspaper reporter will tell you, a story is a story. If the page in question was younger, I might agree that perhaps his actual name be kept out of it, but being that the page in question was of legal age, was also part of a political campaign, had his picture on the internet for anyone to find... what exactly did Wild Bill do wrong? Nothing in my eyes.
Jealousy is an ugly thing isn't it? People need to grow the hell up and have the class to acknowledge when others do good work.
Common sense has a post about this called "A potpourri of doublespeak", then The Right Track has a piece called "Standing up for Wild Bill", Radioactive Liberty has an outrageously funny post sarcastically "Condemning Wild Bill".
Original Story on Passionate America called "you dont know me" ( I left out the persons name, cause more than one can play THAT game).
Bottomline in my eyes is this: We are all trying to make a contribution in our own way and I may be new to blogging but I am not new to the concept of right and wrong, it is right to give credit where it is due and it is wrong to condemn a man that you do not know, for doing something you do not know his reasons for doing nor being jealous because he obviously does it better than you do.
I do not personally know Wild Bill, but I will stand with him on this because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Period.
Cute Side note at on the Foley FireStorm here at Fmragtops Spews.
[UPDATE] 10/09/06- a Comment from Wild Bill.
Well you know me now. Thank you so much for your support. I think you hit the nail on the head with this post. Thank you again.
Quite welcome and proud to know ya Wild Bill!!!