What? No mainstream media covering this? Shocking!

[Maitre]

I find this cadre of journalists professionally derelict and morally bankrupt in that they believe it is acceptable to advocate out right demagoguery, overt slander, and using their profession to destroy their own more less liberal peers? This is free speech?

First, yes, this is free speech. That's exactly what it is. Not only that, it's free *private* speech, a conversation among friends that has only been made public by the dishonesty of their ideological opponents. In private, people blow off steam, they rant and rave, they make sarcastic and excessive comments. It happens, it's locker room talk. This is quite explicitly what Journolist was created for.

Second, as is quite clear from reading the link, while some people were advocating aggressive, street-fighter tactics (notably the hot-headed Spencer Ackerman, the source of the juiciest quotes) others thought that this was a mistake, and that they should keep to the high road. Once again: this is a *private discussion*, amongst individual journalists, and not a policy planning meeting. Different ideas abound, based on the personal opinions of the journalists, and do not reflect anything more than that.

[snip]
-Jester

Jester,
I grabbed just the beginning of your post here because I wanted to be sure I understood you. I'm concerned that you're giving someone a pass for having a private conversation about a charged issue and expressing a personal opinion. I don't deny your assertion that such discussions take place, but my concern is that people with such opinions are in a place of control (either control of dissemination of information like journalists, or disbursement of millions of dollars like Ms. Sherrod). I also don't deny that some people maintain bigoted opinions and share them with like minded people, but I challenge the idea that such people (or anyone for that matter) could separate their private opinions from the discharge of their public responsibilities.
In my mind, the eradication of racism, classism, sexism or any form of bigotry in practice should be considered separately from the eradication of same in thought.

These points aside, with regard to the "outing" of someone for their unsavory public comments has degenerated in popular culture to the very "gotcha" mentality that another post mentions. It's hip to catch someone of some notoriety making an ill considered statement, but not because they hold such an opinion: instead there is some thrill and profit to finding evidence of someone ruining their career or reputation. The profit is not in addressing someone's opinions, but it catching them in being so careless as to express their private opinion in front of a microphone. Society has therefore declared that it is not wrong to maintain a bigoted opinion, but it is wrong to express that opinion publically.

Sorry for the incomplete thought, but I've gotten this far and have to go to something else. I'll see if I can bring this to a close sometime later...