Somehow, despite my best efforts, the two wings of this thread are getting squashed together.
The issue of racism is from the Sherrod wing. What she said was public. (It also wasn't racist, it's abundantly clear that she did her job just fine, and that this whole thing was extremely stupid, even by Breitbart's barrel-scraping standards.) She has no reasonable expectation of privacy, and as it turns out, needed none.
The issue of privacy is from the Journolist wing. What was said on that e-mail list was private. There is no accusation there of anyone being racist. Salty language about political opponents was widely employed. Dave Wiegel said some rude things about the Tea Party members, whom he was covering. I think they deserved every word. But even if they didn't, that should not be grounds for firing, especially when the person writing them was communicating among friends and colleagues, and not in the public sphere. Had he said racist things, that would be different. But he didn't, and neither did anyone else on Journolist. But nonetheless, their private communications were made public by their opponents (and yes, by Mickey Kaus, who is a complete lunatic), and used to wreck their careers - for their speech, not for their actions.
-Jester
The issue of racism is from the Sherrod wing. What she said was public. (It also wasn't racist, it's abundantly clear that she did her job just fine, and that this whole thing was extremely stupid, even by Breitbart's barrel-scraping standards.) She has no reasonable expectation of privacy, and as it turns out, needed none.
The issue of privacy is from the Journolist wing. What was said on that e-mail list was private. There is no accusation there of anyone being racist. Salty language about political opponents was widely employed. Dave Wiegel said some rude things about the Tea Party members, whom he was covering. I think they deserved every word. But even if they didn't, that should not be grounds for firing, especially when the person writing them was communicating among friends and colleagues, and not in the public sphere. Had he said racist things, that would be different. But he didn't, and neither did anyone else on Journolist. But nonetheless, their private communications were made public by their opponents (and yes, by Mickey Kaus, who is a complete lunatic), and used to wreck their careers - for their speech, not for their actions.
-Jester