Errant speech
I find myself saddened by the uproar surrounding Burningbird’s wrist-slap of Doc Searls over a less than perfectly egalitarian characterization of blogs.
To my mind, Bb did everything right. She didn’t ignore something she didn’t approve of. She didn’t fulminate, she didn’t proclaim a sudden dislike for Doc, she didn’t generalize from one message to all of Doc’s output, she didn’t generalize from (a putatively sexist) Doc to the rest of the universe. She used humor, not anger, to get her message across.
And all her message really contained was, “Ow. Doc, that hurt.”
And the furor was astounding. Most of it (some of it in BB’s comments, some on Blogsisters) fell into precisely the errors that Bb herself did not commit. Demonizing Doc over a single message. Demonizing men over a single message from Doc. Demonizing Bb for caring, often accusing her of rhetorical violence she didn’t get anywhere near. In other words, big nasty train wreck. I’m writing this post in part because if I were Bb, I’d feel ganged up on, and I don’t think she deserves it.
What’s going on here?
Something that’s an ugly, non-Cluetrainian holdover from business and political communication, I think, at least in part. Such communication, as Doc Weinberger takes pains to point out (yes, I’ve finally got hold of Small Pieces Loosely Joined), is whitewashed and burnished and sanded to a fine sheen. Perfect.
Which, as Doc W does not point out but possibly should, leaves the rest of us like a pack of slavering hounds in cover waiting for the first bit of prey to savage. We aren’t gentle when this kind of communication falters. We don’t give second chances. (Not that most purveyors of PR would take them; they seem to prefer to sweep things under carpets.) We don’t forgive.
Worse, we don’t look for patterns in communication. One strike and you better put that bat over your shoulder and head for the bleachers—never mind what your batting average has been until then.
This pattern is, quite simply, inappropriate in person-to-person communication, especially when folks are laying themselves out on the table as much as they do in many weblogs. Because real people make mistakes. Real people don’t always think through what they say and do as much as they ought. Real people don’t always realize that they’ve hurt or offended others.
Bb, I reiterate, did the right thing. She’s as much a Doc fan as she ever was. So am I, though I found his post as annoying as she did. We’re both cutting Doc some slack not just because we like him, but because he doesn’t have a pattern of sexist remarks or behavior. I can think of a couple bloggers I wouldn’t cut that kind of slack for (and some of ’em weighed in during the fight), because they do exhibit such a pattern.
A similar mode of behavior, in a less emotionally-charged subject, can be seen in my posts about HTML, CSS, and technical blogging issues. I screw these things up. Regularly. Y’all cut me slack on it; I’ve never once gotten an email screaming “Call yourself a text artisan, ya big fraud?!” That’s partly because I admit my mistakes and credit my correctors; I don’t play at an unreal perfection. It’s partly because I have a demonstrated pattern of saying reasonably coherent things about these subjects.
And partly it’s that y’all are nice people, of course.
So next time, let’s do like Bb, shall we? Let’s speak up, gently. Let’s forgive fallibility while remaining suitably harsh toward repeated or wilful offense. Let’s keep the individual individual.
I’ll close with a confession: I quit reading Backup Brain recently over some words by Tom Negrino on the topic of a living wage and those who would benefit from it that I thought were pretty callous. I should go back. Tom and Dori have a better batting average than that.