Peter Vajda has written Robert Fuller to point out that several bloggers in the professional world have recently taken up the subject of negativity, and he has written his own essay on how this negativity is manifested in the blogosphere.

I’m curious as to whether there’s a widespread belief that the blogosphere is inherently negative since I personally have never had that impression. Therefore, I’m posting the Vajda essay here, and I invite everyone who reads this blog or otherwise deals with meta-analysis on the blogosphere to offer their views on whether there is a preponderance of negativity.

Here’s the first paragraph of the Vajda essay to give everyone a taste of the argument:

Social scientists, socioeconomists, and social psychologists are increasingly pointing to the fact that the social mood in the United States, and across the world’s culture and civilization is turning bad and that overall social mood is going to get a lot worse before improving. Research graphs and diagrams, such as the Elliot Wave Principle, underscore the finding that there is a natural ebb and flow of social mood (positive vs. negative) and that darker times, socially and politically, lie ahead of us, creating increased tension and negativity. Nowhere is this negative mood more evident than in the blogosphere where incivility, disrespect, meanness, bullying, and demeaning behavior rule the day, and the posts. What is it that accounts for this negativity among bloggers and what can be done to perhaps soothe and diminish their high degree of vitriol, rancor, meanness, incivility and disrespect?

Read the rest of the Vajda essay here.

I just met Raines a few months ago, but it didn’t take long to discover he’s almost a Berkeley institution unto himself. There’s only one thing to say to a Quaker-Jewish-Pastafarian-Pirate wedding - that was precisely the thing for Raines and his bride Betsy. I wish them luck and much love in their marriage.

This post refers to a tragic situation that occurred on Daily Kos - I’m not going to rehash it or add juicy links because I’m worried that the person used her real name, and I don’t want to add to her problems by feeding the Google monster. The first thing I saw when I revved up Daily Kos the next morning was another moving plea for help in the rec box, this time by a fairly high profile diarist. I truly empathized with his frustration at having to advocate for himself. His situation sounded horrific: I hope he will find the help he needs, and I’m grateful he’s using his writing gifts to illustrate the impact of a widespread problem on relatively helpless individuals.

The reason I wrote this follow up is I’m concerned that people have to be “amplified” to be heard, or otherwise they are allowed to fall through the cracks. Many people just on Daily Kos are living on the edge. I’ve been mostly unemployed (a little under-the-table work) for three years. I won’t go into my litany of problems (but feel free to read through my diaries if your curious) - the point is that I read diaries and comments from people in similar extreme situations every day. They, too, have been going without help they need for a while. They, too, have gotten to the point where they are going on the web and shouting their problems, hoping that someone, anyone will start listening. All the cries for help create a lot of noise, so people who could help just tune out.

It’s not just a matter of whether you are articulate enough to communicate your problems. I would say most people who participate in the blogosphere have above-average communication skills: they already have a major advantage over the significant portion of the population that can barely read, who can’t advocate for themselves or interest anyone in advocating for them, and are therefore invisible. At this point, though, you have to scream to be heard. You have to have a following as a writer (a “rec box regular”), media contacts, or access to mailing lists that will get the word out. You have to be willing to do shocking things, use profanity, wave huge multi-colored flags. If you want to hold on to your dignity as the one thing you have left, you’re out of luck. The message the world is sending is give us all a good show, or you aren’t working hard enough to deserve our help.

This state of affairs depresses the hell out of me. I mentioned in a comment before that I was wavering about voting for the Democratic candidate in my state (though the Republican in office is beyond awful), because he gave me the impression that keeping people from falling through the cracks wasn’t part of his platform. Good policy is important, and in theory progressive policy helps more people in the aggregate, but I want political representatives who are also willing to address the flaws in their policy. Instead of worrying that people might “come out of the woodwork” to take advantage of programs, a good political representative should be wondering what is going on with people while they’re still in the woodwork and being ignored. The implication is that the system is okay as long as people suffer and die quietly.

It’s up to us, the voters, to let our political representatives know that there are no “acceptable numbers” of people falling through the cracks. It’s up to us to tell our political representatives that we will vote for the one wants to help real people and seal the cracks instead of just orating about policy.

AllisonInSeattle made an important comment that this is one of the strengths of the Red State outlook. People in the largely red rural areas use small churches and civic organizations to try to cover the cracks, even though they often have meager resources as a community. In urban “Blue” areas, people are often isolated, and while they vote for the party that’s promising to do the right thing, that promise is often empty as far as individual lives are concerned.

In sum, I hope the efforts that Kossacks made that today to help people in dire straits will spark a larger discussion about how to reach out to the people who have no voice at all.

One of the problems with establishing dignity as a fundamental value is that everyone’s idea of dignity is different. My friend Bob Fuller has been attempting to define it in the breach as the removal of rankism. Recently, I’ve been trying to supplement this abstract approach by enumerating specifics. As I jotted down images and ideas, a common theme emerged. I realized that the one thing I needed most to be able to maintain my sense of dignity in life was the ability to preserve my integrity.

The idea that I put integrity first explains a lot in my life, and the constant pressure to sacrifice my integrity explains why I never feel like I’m living in dignity. I often feel like I’ve been asked to choose between integrity and survival: choosing the former threatens my survival, while choosing the latter guarantees my indignity.

A recent conversation gave me cause to ponder the order of my values. We were discussing how job interviews work, with an eye to why I compulsively sabotage myself. The fact I hate job interviews like the plague was no excuse. Everyone hates job interviews, but since people have to work 99.9% just bite the bullet and do it. What makes me different from them? Why should I be the exception to the hazing that everyone else has to go through?

I hope my very smart friend won’t mind if I quote him exactly, because I think he nailed the common outlook:

I am not a good interviewee. But having sat on the other side of the table, I have become better. Because I realized that it’s a game, and what we’re looking to see is that

1) you are competent
2) your personality is agreeable and isn’t going to piss everyone else off.
3) you are socialized well enough to corportations to play the bullshit game. For example, one question we always ask is “do you prefer to work alone or as part of a group?”

The correct answer is “both”.

We know it is BS, the interviewee knows it is BS. But the game is to say it sincerely, smile and tell us how you like both.

Now despite knowing this I’m still not very good, because I have an allergy to BS that I can’t entirely control. But that’s the game.

Competent, likeable, socialized.

For a long time I’ve wondered why the current employment system persists. If everyone hates job interviews, and everyone understands the reason is the distortions mentioned above, why don’t we find a better system? Is hazing more than a metaphor here? Are we just all struggling to get to a position where we can put others through what we went through?

This is idle speculation on my part because I’ve never been a hiring manager. All I know is no matter how much I want the job, I find some small way to rebel against it every time. I always find a way to express my discomfort with the very circumstances of the interview - from admitting I put integrity first to just looking very uncomfortable about “probing” questions.

Choosing integriy goes against the advice of all my friends. They see my choices as quixotically impractical, self-defeating, or at least self-punishing. Everyone accepts that people need to “get along” first, and to refuse to do what you have to do to get along is the equivalent of asking the rest of the world to pick up your slack. (For instance, if you can’t afford insurance, society ends up picking up your tab when you go to the county hospital). As a very good friend put it recently, I’m not in a place where I can afford the luxury of integrity. I should put integrity off until I have a safety net.  

So why do I put integrity first? I have some theories based on my personal history which I’ll spare everyone. There’s another aspect of my last-ditch defense of integrity that I think may be a universal reaction to this day and age. We are all being asked to constantly adapt to change, constantly chase the cheese. Most of us are in debt (student loans, mortgages, car payments) and this compels us to submit to others so they will “give” us work. Our skills don’t determine the compensation for that work - the market determines are compensation. Furthermore, corporations have the power (through lobbying, litigation, and PR) to jimmy the market in ways that decrease the power of the individual. In other words, everyone feels the rug can be pulled out from under them at any minute. Under those circumstances, the only thing individuals can protect is their sense of self. Integrity is the primary component of a sense of self. To be treated with dignity is for the rest of the world to respect your ownership of yourself. To be forced to sacrifice your integrity just to survive is slavery.

Back to the problem of the job interview: when push comes to shove I believe, with all the power of the deepest spiritual belief, that the job interview itself is a test of my integrity. Every interviewer is asking me whether I would put “fitting in” before everything else. I can’t say “yes” to that, either directly or indirectly.

Worse, if I feel everyone who “passed” the interview did say “yes” to the implied question of whether they would put their integrity second, that means the entire workplace will be populated by people of questionable integrity. Every wonder why we end up with so many psychopaths at the top? It’s because the interview process screens out people who put integrity first at the bottom. This also explains groupthink and turf wars - the interview process selects for people who are either utterly conformists or fantastic liars. I don’t want to work in an environment where I feel surrounded by people who put “fitting in” first.

I apologize if everyone who has a job now feels insulted: I do think that there is a widespread gut instinct about this problem which is reflected in the fact that most everyone hates job interviews. I don’t think people are evil because they need to get a job.

So what makes me different? Am I just so special that I don’t have to do what everyone else does?

I think the difference is I subconsciously made the connection between integrity and dignity. I realized my life had no dignity, and I haven’t figured out how to get it back. Hopefully this won’t sound like hyperbole, but I’m not sure life is worth living if you’re obligated to live in a state of indignity. Since I’m living in indignity now, I guess I’m just waiting for it to be over.

I wonder how many people out there feel the way I do?

After reading about various interesting events that had taken place in virtual venues within the world of Second Life, it finally sunk in. This might have a potential as a civic space, where I could talk to people all over the world about the idea of dignity as a human right.

Second Life is a massive virtual reality environment. It’s not so much a game as a global conference call that takes place in fantastic imaginary settings. All sorts of activists could set up kiosks around the virtual public square. People with common interests could meet and coordinate for political action. One day there might even be ways to facilitate voter registration. Enthralled by the vision of cyber-democracy, I set up an account.

It was very easy for me to get started with Second Life because I have some experience with 3D apps. These skills are more common to people under 30, so I’m sure that for the present participation will skew fairly young. I spent a few minutes twiddling with my character - here she is wearing a “Fight Rankism” t-shirt!

When I did my initial recon, I was a bit disappointed. A lot of the development of Second Life has been commercial, which makes much of the world resemble MYST: The Sleazy Vegas Edition. It didn’t take me long to figure out why a world of virtual casinos was inevitable - in fact it’s necessitated by the game’s economic model.

The number one obstacle to developing civic space within Second Life is its exploitative economic model.

The first thing I wanted to do in Second Life was build a landmark to stand for the cause of dignity while my character was offline. You can’t do that in Second Life unless you own land. Unfortunately land is very expensive within the terms of the game. If you don’t want to indenture yourself to labor some established character, your main option is to collect cash from Money Trees (largesse from the wealthier denizens of Second Life). It took me a few hours to collect $100: this isn’t a fraction of what I would need to buy land: definitely not worth it.

I did try just building a few small objects with a note about dignity attached, to leave on tables and benches. Apparently this is regarded as the equivalent of littering in Second Life, and my objects were quickly returned to my character’s inventory. Suddenly I understood why there are whole sweatshops devoted to farming for game money for online games: since the primary activity of the game (building) costs money, the players themselves enforce a money economy within the game so they can pass on their costs to the next person who comes along.

While Second Life is a really cool idea, I think the business model is questionable. People can get game cash to buy land by paying a subscription fee to Linden Labs (the owners of Second Life). This means that people are paying to contribute their creativity and labor to develop an attractive game space for the profit of Linden Labs. This is worse than Wikipedia, where people just donate their time to the crowdsource the greater glory of Jimmy Wales. Also, you lose the fruits of your investment and efforts if you are banned for any reason (serious legal thought has been devoted to this issue).

If anyone from Linden Labs reads this, my tip would be to subsidize people who want to build. Just make people pay to buy prefab objects, when they want to be conspicuous consumers instead of producers. From the level of advertising that already infests second life, Linden Labs will be able to find plenty of marketing departments willing to play for bling.

My gripe about the exploitative economic model aside, there is potential for Second Life civic space. I’m certainly not the first person to think of it. After searching through the  Second Life group listing, I discovered that adventurous students at New York Law School have been developing Democracy Island. I’m not sure what activities they have in mind, but I joined the group just for the heck of it.

I couldn’t find any other obvious political fora, but it could be that I just didn’t hit upon the right keywords. There’s no question there’s room for much, much more development around the concept.

Despite the proliferation of cheesy casinos, there are lots of places within Second Life where you can almost feel the love poured into the landscape. Some of the creations are as sophisticated as any professionally designed game (in fact Second Life might actually serve as a proving ground for designers). There were all sorts of geeky in-jokes from working stargates to the occasional Tardis to a wreck of the Enterprise.

I probably won’t do very much with Second Life for the time being. As mentioned above, I’m not about to pay Linden Labs to develop their product for them. I do think there’s a lot of potential for community-building and fostering civic discourse (on a global scale) within Second Life, though. I am going to wander around a bit more tonight just to see what’s where - if anyone wants to join me, I’m the one wearing the “Fight Rankism” t-shirt.

It was a tragedy that I couldn’t attend BlogHer. The conference took place a 40 minute drive away (San Jose), and I knew some people who were going. Unfortunately, I don’t drive, and I just can’t afford the transportation and hotel costs right now. I had thus reconciled myself to the fact BlogHer was out of my reach, and I planned to spend the weekend twiddling with Breakingranks.net and catching up on Jamal Dajani’s Middle East Intelligence Report.

At the very last minute, Mary Hodder, the braininess behind Dabble offered me a ride to the BlogHer reception. While I wasn’t actually registered for the conference, I got to check out this small part of it.

Just the ride to San Jose was an education. I shared a ride Sylvia Paull, who runs the Berkeley CyberSalon. I’ve lived in Berkeley since 1992, and I’ve been working and playing in “cyberspace” for almost as long,   but I’d never actually hooked into Berkeley’s vast community of bloggers, web developers, and tech entrepreneurs. I guess I’m too much of a geek to even go out and meet other geeks. Anyway, Sylvia made a special effort to invite me to all her Happenings. She’s at the top of the list of Thank You Notes I have to write today.

The BlogHer reception was a lot of fun. At first I was worried, because I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I didn’t want to hang all over Mary, either. Fortunately, I literally bumped right into Susan Getgood, an energetic marketing blogger. Since the flipside of my rage against the corporate machine is engagement with a lot of PR and marketing folk, I actually knew Susan. And since Susan is naturally gregarious, she introduced me to a few new people, most notably tsunami-blogger Evelyn Rodriguez.

I also admit to snitching some of the free wine. Hopefully BlogHer’s lawyer’s won’t come after me.

Mary was staying for the conference, so I got a ride home with one of the new forces behind Our Media, Lisa Padilla. I at least knew Mary through participating in her Dabble beta and soliciting her opinions on rankism in the blogosphere. I’d never met Lisa at all, but she was extremely warm and friendly, and we found a lot to talk about.

The last kindness of the night had nothing to do with BlogHer or blogging. Lisa dropped me off at the Millbrae BART (train) station, which was closest to her house. There I discovered, thanks to my apparent inability to read a train schedule, the last train had already left for the night.

Thus, I found myself in Millbrae at 1am. I had no cellphone, and no one to call even if I had one (nope - didn’t even get Lisa’s card before she dropped me off). I had six dollars and my pocket. I also had a credit card, but taking a cab back to Berkeley would have cost me more than spending the weekend at BlogHer. I had exactly six dollars in my pocket.

The BART station agent was then kind enough to point out that there was a popular 24-hour restaurant, Peter’s Cafe, right beside the BART station. While I questioned whether I still had the ability to pull an all-nighter at my age, I decided to give it a shot.

Apparently the staff at Peter’s Cafe has seen this situation before, because they were all very sweet and gave me a whole pot of coffee. I just settled in with the book I had luckily brought with me to read on the train (a translation of The Peony Pavilion, if anyone is interested).

I ordered something called a “Baby Pancake”, which was really the equivalent of a whole apple pie. I was only able to eat a quarter of it the entire five hours I spent there. I recommend it as a special treat if anyone else finds themselves trapped in Millbrae.

I ultimately made it home during the wee hours of Saturday morning. I then slept most of the day, and I wasn’t really functioning on all cylinders on Sunday, either. Now I’m back  in gear, though, and ready to follow up with all the cool people I met at the BlogHer reception.

All of these people were previously strangers to me. I was able to go to the BlogHer reception not through the kindness of one person, but the kindness of many. That sort of thing really renews my faith in the human spirit.

I’m heartened by the title of the The Human Dignity Act - legislation to extend at least some Federal labor law to the U.S. territory of the Marianas. While The Human Dignity Act is a specific response to Tom DeLay and K Street corruption, I think it implicitly affirms that respect for labor is still an American value.

We all need to hear that affirmation in light of BushCo’s ongoing quest to turn the clock back to the good old days of slave labor. While relentlessly exhorting the masses to the Protestant Work Ethic, what the Bush Crony Class really has in mind is the other American history of the quasi-feudal plantation system - where people flocked to the Colonies for the opportunity to become a gentile landowner, relieved manual labor by cheap, docile dependents.

In the U.S., fueling economic expansion has become an end in itself. Human beings are mere fodder for this process. While weasel-eyed Bush cronies proclaim the moral uplift of tough competition, no one really dwells on what happens to the losers in this process. People are just expected to “keep trying” until they are institutionalized either through the prison system or the mental health system. According to these rules, you either do what you have to do to win or you’re subjected to chronic indignity.

It’s time to refocus the shame where it belongs: on the people who are advocating and upholding this system of top predator exploitation and plunder. Government and corporate employers need to go beyond giving lip service to policies that respect and defend labor - they should get serious about enforcing them.

Take this case of sexual harrassment: the managers elected to look the other way and left their vulnerable subordinate to deal with the ranky panky on her own.

Today the Supreme Court did the right thing by reducing the personal risk involved in filing a sexual harassment complaint and, moreover, making it easier to enforce all anti-discrimination law. By upholding Sheila White’s claim of retaliation:

…the justices defined retaliation as any action taken by an employer that would intimidate “a reasonable employee” into backing off from a discrimination complaint.

The next step is for workers to rise up and demand justice wherever this intimidation occurs. This would be a significant step toward asserting the dignity of our labor and finding the common ground to repel the predations of the Crony Class.

Both political parties know that a unifying core value expressed in a pithy slogan translates into votes. FDR’s Democrats had “The New Deal”; LBJ’s party advanced “The Great Society.” Republicans rally to “lower taxes,” “smaller government,” “strong defense,” and “family values.”

What core value, what slogan, could move us beyond the toxic standoff that paralyzes American politics today?

The answer lies in a single word—Dignity.

This core value takes wings on the inclusive slogan: “Dignity For All.” The bumper sticker reads “Dignity4All,” and it will soon begin appearing on cars across America.

The idea of a universal right to dignity may at first seem too simple to pull together the disparate elements of this divided nation, but it’s not. Dignity is what people want, on the left, on the right, and most importantly, in the vast, non-ideological middle.

Dignity is not negotiable. People will stand up for their dignity, and once they’re on their feet, it’s usually not long before they’re marching for justice.

Two hundred years of bloody world history have shown that there is no direct path from Liberty to Justice. But if we interpose a steppingstone, we can build a bridge to justice. The name of that stone is not “Equality,” it’s “Dignity.” By establishing the right to dignity, and then enacting legislation that protects everyone’s dignity equally, we can give concrete meaning to Thomas Jefferson’s evocative claim that “All men are created equal.”

A “dignitarian society” pulls together what’s best from the three broad strands of civic culture dominating politics since the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The polarizing stranglehold these ideals exert on the contemporary imagination, when any one is prioritized over the others, is a major source of the incivility that infects our politics today.

Conservatives see themselves as Liberty’s defenders; progressives pride themselves as the champions of equality. Both parties promise Fraternity, but neither delivers it.

Dignity is more encompassing than Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. It’s the missing link that when restored will yield an electoral mandate to make good on America’s founding promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

The politics of dignity puts the “We” back in “We the People.” It spans the conservative-liberal divide. It closes the ideological fissures that separate libertarian, egalitarian, and fraternitarian ideologies and breaks the stalemate that has stalled the advance of justice since the 1960s.

A dignitarian society does not tolerate indignity—towards anyone. When this principle is translated into policy, it rules out acceptance of a permanent underclass. It disallows prejudice and discrimination toward all the groups that have rallied around the various flags of identity politics. It transforms the stalemate over abortion and gay marriage into a civil discussion of whose rights to dignity are being abridged. It proclaims everyone’s right to a sustainable environment.

Like liberty and justice, dignity is most easily defined in the negative. As a precursor to banishment or enslavement, we’re all attuned to pick up on the slightest hint of indignity.

What causes people to experience indignity? The precise and universal cause of indignity is the abuse of power. Make a list of the most distressing issues of recent years: corporate corruption, the Katrina catastrophe, sexual abuse by clergy, Abu Ghraib, domestic spying, etc. Every one of them can be traced to an abuse of power by individuals of high rank. Often the abuses had the blessing of people of even higher rank.

To effectively oppose the full range of abuses of power vested in rank, we need a word that identifies them collectively. Abuse and discrimination based on color and gender are called “racism” and “sexism,” respectively. By analogy, abuse and discrimination based on the power inherent in rank is “rankism.” This coinage provides a vitalizing link between the methods of identity politics and the moral values of democratic governance. Having a generic name for abuses of power makes them much easier to target, and targeting them is precisely what’s called for if democracy is to resume its evolution.

However principled the cause, no party can present itself as a champion of dignity so long as its members reserve the right to indulge in rankism. This includes treating political opponents with indignity. Humiliation and condescension—toward domestic opponents or foreign enemies—are inherently rankist postures, and as such they have no place in a dignitarian politics.

How would a society that makes dignity its linchpin differ from ones shaped by ideologies that accentuate liberty, equality, or fraternity? The difference is one of nuance, not opposition, for a dignitarian society combines the strengths of all three traditions.

A dignitarian society promotes individual freedom, while at the same time tempering the uninhibited free market with institutions of social responsibility that insure that economic power does not confer unwarranted educational or political advantages. For example, you shouldn’t have to be rich to attend good schools, or command a fortune to stand for office.

A dignitarian society provides genuine equality of opportunity. In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into master and servant classes, is unacceptable. There’s a way out of poverty in a dignitarian society. Everyone earns a living wage and has access to quality health care.

The politics of dignity sees democracy as a work in progress. Democracy’s next step—one that will enlarge liberty, deliver justice, and foster fraternity—is to overcome rankism and build a dignitarian society.

Dignity is an idea whose time has come. The party that takes dignity as its core value can mobilize the energy not merely to win at the polls, but to win with a mandate to fulfill our nation’s implicit promise of “Dignity For All.”

*This article was a featured column on Huffington Post on June 15, 2006.

Over the last year there has been a torrent of media articles intended to discipline (or terrorize) people into using what the power elite considers to be “good judgment” in the presentation of your online self. This reminds me of the early Puritans scurrying across the wilderness with a mission to scold and rebuke all those who weren’t toeing the line for the theocratic Millenium.

CNet struck the gusher of contemporary fear, loathing, and perpetual irony when Elinor Mills googled Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. Ever since then, the mainstream media has been obsessed with “digital dirt”, preaching to the reprobate bloggers and warning parents that their children will be damned to unemployment for their injudicious use of MySpace, Facebook, and other social sites (nope, I’m not going to clue the snooping Puritans in).

This week the New York Times hit with the old one-two punch. First sticking your neck out in the public space is a threat to your livelihood. Second, the Internet is a playground for stalkers. All that was missing from the set was the ever-popular screed against the Internet as a moral hazard that facilitates goofing off in the workplace, therefore undermining the Puritan work ethic.

Despite widespread interest in privacy and defending the few individual rights we have left, public response to this elite reformism has been muffled at best. I think some of the confusion stems from the idea the Internet is a public space: of course your employer, an army of marketers, random stalkers, and men in black are as free to seek you out as anyone. Sure your presence is amplified and perma-recorded in that public space, which leads to the reasonable conclusion that the glitterati have always known: you can’t get the benefits of visibility without being prepared to fend off the dangers.

Most people, of course, don’t command the social influence, legal resources, or public relations personnel that celebrities wield to cope with attacks on their reputation in public space. The Puritan Reformers of this age as well as the 17th century are concerned above all with everyone else’s reputation. In the previous Puritan heyday of 17th-century England, it was common to go to court for just being called a rude name in the street. Today this is rarely a feasible option, and frankly I don’t think using the MSM megaphone to shout “Repent, Sinners!” is going to rollback the Information Age, either.

I’d like to propose another way to look at our online over-exposure. It’s not only “public space” - it’s a form of civic “third space” - i.e., a place for socializing and discussion that is apart from family and apart from the workplace. The third space used to happen in the market, at church, and in the local pub. Now it happens on the Internet, too.

The third space is publicly accessible, but it is not a standing invitation to be attacked or abused. When the people who have power over you seek you out for the purposes of threatening your livelihood or putting pressure on your political opinions, that’s abuse.

While I’m sure there are a stampede of lawsuits just around the corner that will ultimately persuade the beancounters in risk management to discourage corporate HR from stalking hapless personnel, I would rather see the monied elite rethink the New Puritanism, and, instead, make a move in the direction of progressive leadership. For instance, at the next Business Ethics Summit, the big decision-makers could pledge to establish corporate policies to forbid snooping into the private lives of either potential or existing employees. They could instead declare themselves to be in favor of free public discourse and support the emerging third space. The sort of heavy-handed discipline imposed in the workplace is often counter-productive and stressful during working hours: it’s certainly inappropriate, if not inhuman, to extend the New Puritanism into the “third space”, too.

Robert Fuller just called to update me on all the goings-on at YearlyKos. He attended the Political Journalism panel, where representatives of the main stream media incuding Atrios, Matt Bai, Jay Rosen, Christy Hardin Smith, and Paul Waldman engaged with the increasing influence of bloggers in the national conversation. Fuller was particularly impressed with blogger Marcy Wheeler (”emptywheel” on Daily Kos and The Next Hurrah).

Fuller also spoke highly of the New Politics Begins panel, led by New Democratic Network President Simon Rosenberg and New Politics Institute Director Peter Leyden. This panel examined specific social and political factors (such as immigration) that the Democrats would have to take into account in order to win the presidency in 2008.

Fuller also met Dr. Joel Rogers (Professor of Law, Political Science, and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of Center On Wisconsin Strategy) at a panel on Labor and Power.