Judge Disses Lawyer and other Anonymous Blog Tales

I recently responded to an anonymous comment on a post about the Lt. Gov,

"I encourage you to try this again, but replace 'sleazebag coward' and 'lowlife' with specific incidents that bring you to that conclusion."

Anon, replied, in part,

"So Stevie, get a grip,because I don't have to answer to you."

This anonymous poster may well fit into one of the few legit categories of people who ought to be able to post anonymously - people who legitimately fear retaliation.  She said she was the wife of a National Guardsman and she was criticizing the leadership of the guard.  But I got the impression that she felt she could say whatever she wanted, however she wanted, on my blog.   That implied sense of entitlement had me scratching my head.

[Update April 14: Sometimes responding politely can change the tone of the conversation. I got this comment from Anon today:

I apologize Steve. I was lost in the moment and am trying to get a grip on myself as my husband was treated so badly while in the Alaska Guard by Campbell's cronies. My husband is a decent, honorable soldier and made the mistake of speaking out about unethical situations. He was reprimanded severly and he had just returned from his second tour in Afghanistan. He served America with great honor and is a wonderful family man. I apologize for my tangent.]

So this New York Times article today "News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments" got my attention.  This part was particularly interesting.

The Plain Dealer of Cleveland recently discovered that anonymous comments on its site, disparaging a local lawyer, were made using the e-mail address of a judge who was presiding over some of that lawyer’s cases.
That kind of proxy has been documented before; what was more unusual was that The Plain Dealer exposed the connection in an article. The judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, denied sending the messages — her daughter took responsibility for some of them. And last week, the judge sued The Plain Dealer, claiming it had violated her privacy.

The paper acknowledged that it had broken with the tradition of allowing commenters to hide behind screen names, but it served notice that anonymity was a habit, not a guarantee. Susan Goldberg, The Plain Dealer’s editor, declined to comment for this article. But in an interview she gave to her own newspaper, she said that perhaps the paper should not have investigated the identity of the person who posted the comments, “but once we did, I don’t know how you can pretend you don’t know that information.”

Some prominent journalists weighed in on the episode, calling it evidence that news sites should do away with anonymous comments. Leonard Pitts Jr., a Miami Herald columnist, wrote recently that anonymity has made comment streams “havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.” [See the whole article here.]

I'm trying to pack today.  We've put this off to the last possible moment - we return to Anchorage tomorrow.  I'm trying to show that I can restrain my blogging habit, so I'm not going to comment more now.  But it discusses an issue I've thought a lot about.  Okay, Steve, just stop and leave it at that and pack.