First, here's Richmond Democrat on "The Hunting of Joe Stanley":
Attacking a child? Attacking someone's dead mother? Invading someone's privacy and posting their address online (the address where said child lives). Trying to have someone's child taken away from them?!?! This does not look good for the ODBA. While I do not condone what Joe Stanley did in response, I now understand that he was responding to a terrifying and systematic invasion of his privacy and a highly organized and coordinated campaign of cyberstalking. Small wonder that Joe lashed out.
Now, Anonymous Is A Woman on "Rushing to Judgment and Intimidating Opponents":
The whole argument given by those like Foley and Boortz was built on a fragile house of cards: liberal indoctrination rendered the students and faculty unable to defend themselves against a deadly assault.But when the truth came out that both students and faculty had, in fact, done just that, often sacrificing their own lives so their students or classmates might live, that house of cards collapsed. And the Foleys of the blogosphere never said a simple, "hey, I was wrong."
Real journalists correct errors and retract false stories all the time. Every newspaper has a page where those retractions are printed routinely. To err is human. To retract is to be a professional reporter.
"I was wrong." Three simple words that the likes of Alton Foley apparently are unable to utter, even when they make the most vile claims, such as that the heroes of Virginia Tech did not defend themselves due to liberal indoctrination.
I would add that over the past year, we have seen right-wing bloggers claim that Jim Webb was a pedophile (note the obsession with sex once again?), that Raising Kaine was breaking the law (note the attempt at intimidation and bullying?), that several Jewish bloggers were "Jew baiting" (shockingly, one of the offending right-wing bloggers is now RPV communications director), etc. They also viciously attacked Waldo Jaquith for the terrible crime of creating a blogroll for all to use - for free! - and then having the audacity to remove a site for violating standards of minimal decency.
To paraphrase Bill O'Reilly, this is what the right-wing bloggers in question do. They intimidate. They bully. They lie. They assassinate character. They assault peoples' integrity, attempt to harm their livelihoods, even attack their children! They never admit they were wrong or apologize.
Now, I'm sure someone out there will say, "well, don't both sides do it?" The answer is that there are certainly nasty mouth breathing cretins on the left as well as the right. But for whatever reason, the right wing blogosphere -- at least in Virginia -- is overwhelmingly nastier than the "leftosphere." Not coincidentally, the Virginia "rightosphere" is also less effective, despite their attempts to skew the rankings by intensively linking to each other and creating a tool that is obviously meant to boost their "influence." In sports or in board games, I believe it's called "cheating." And it's just another thing they do.
You're a pretty darned good writer yourself, you know.