Who's Your Mama? - Blogger Ethics & Local Politics (Or - Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss)

Tony has built one of the largest audiences in the local blog world, mostly through intemperate and dead-on humor. His is one of those sites that has me thinking "I can't believe I laughed at that," after I spew coffee in response to some bit of outrageously funny misogyny or racism. But those of us who have been reading him for a long time appreciate his brand of humor, and, if you don't like it, you're reading the wrong page.

Lately, though, he's been focusing his contempt upon a particular person - Beth Gottstein. Beth's running for City Council (4th District, at large), and she's an acquaintance I've always liked. But Tony has been trashing her as aggressively as possible - falsely implying she's an alcoholic, hinting that she's slutty, and lying about how long she has lived in Kansas City. The hit parade is compiled at the Pitch this week, and it reveals a sustained effort at character assassination intimidating in its freedom from restraint.

(It's funny - if you go back to the first of these diatribes, I show up in the comments, naively asking why people were bashing Beth Gottstein. Nobody had a substantive answer.)

Eventually, somebody called and filled me in. Tony was trying to tear Beth down because his mom is going to get into the race. I emailed Tony to ask whether the accusation was true, but he never responded. (About the same time, he stopped linking to my posts on his blog, but I have no idea whether that is retribution for knowing the truth, or simply not finding anything I've written link-worthy. Either is plausible.)

So. What we have here is the biggest presence on the local blog scene, using the power of his podium as aggressively and nastily as he possibly can, to undermine a candidate who opposes someone to whom he has an undisclosed relationship. Wow. How far "citizen journalism" has come - we've managed to become even more corrupt than the corporate media.

Now, don't get me wrong. Tony and I have the right to post whatever we want on our pages, within the almost non-existent bounds of the law. Heck, I called Bush "lizardlike" in the previous post, and called a long list of local school districts "red necks" in the post before that. The blog world is not a well-mannered tea party.

But, as this episode demonstrates, bloggers are also not above secret conflicts of interest. Don't mistake bluntness for candor. Don't mistake humor for honesty. And, most certainly, don't mistake blogs for news.