The Facebook Skeletons Come Out

[didymus]

NY Times:

The Facebook Skeletons Come Out

AMONG the many firsts in the 2010 elections, it is safe to assume that the following words had never before been uttered about a future member of Congress, “This is a candidate who is probably best known for getting drunk and having sex on television.”

The comment, made by the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, was lobbed at Sean Duffy, who overcame his bawdy past as a star on MTV’s “Real World: Boston” in 1997 to ride a wave of conservative discontent into office. Some of Mr. Duffy’s youthful indiscretions that were captured on film and dredged up by his opponents included a drunken toga party and images of him dancing on a pool table in his underwear.
With the ubiquity of technology and social networking Web sites like Facebook that allow — and compel — young people to document themselves drinking, wearing little clothing or putting themselves in otherwise compromised positions, it was a given that a generation of politicians would someday find themselves confronted with digital evidence of their more immodest and imprudent moments.

. . .

Still, humans can be as unforgiving as they can be indiscreet. Daniel J. Solove, a professor at George Washington University Law School and the author of “The Future of Reputation,” said a lot of people make the argument that “if everyone’s warts are exposed, hey, ‘Everybody has warts, we’ll live with it.’ ”
“I think that’s overly optimistic,” he added. “That’s not human nature.”

So should we have a statute of limitations for all the stupid stuff you’ve done up to twenty-five?
I suspect we’ll forgive OUR politicians for their indiscretions but nail the other side for theirs.

 

[vz71]

Actually, I find it easier to nail everybody for their ‘youthful indescretions’

Why bother trying to sort out whose side they may or may not be on, stupidity is stupidity.

Meanwhile I am wondering where the parents were. Not when they were acting out, but years earlier when they should have been teaching their kids.

 

[bbarrick8383]

Meanwhile I am wondering where the parents were. Not when they were acting out, but years earlier when they should have been teaching their kids.

I know that’s usually the first response for a lot of people. But, my mother raised me in the Church and they were both semi strict parents that were not afraid to punish us when we did wrong with a good belt. But when it came time to hang out with the buddies the stupid showed up as well. I can’t imagine how bad I might have been had it not been for the religion and the spankings they gave me.

 

[mindlight]

I know that’s usually the first response for a lot of people. But, my mother raised me in the Church and they were both semi strict parents that were not afraid to punish us when we did wrong with a good belt. But when it came time to hang out with the buddies the stupid showed up as well. I can’t imagine how bad I might have been had it not been for the religion and the spankings they gave me.

Agreed and also It’s a little selfrighteous to condemn all parents for the behaviour of their children and I would certainly not dishonour mine with the blame for my wilder years.

The soul that sins is the one that dies…

Anyway too often it’s the “walking dead”, who have never lived, that condemn those who learnt the hard way that life is messier and crueller that it often seems when we are young, in love or with friends enjoying freedoms we have never known before and never learnt how to handle for ourselves.

One can , in a single life , be both the young man on the table dancing around in his underwear at a party and then later on the older wiser advocate of a better way of living. The political process condemns on the basis of externalities much as the Pharisees condemned in another age. But God sees the heart and welcomes repentant sinners into his fold. Digital transparency and the forced honesty of the wired generation about the sins of ones youth should make those who who attain positions of responsibility both more merciful and more humble. Qualities I vastly prefer to the smug, selfrighteousness and by Gods standards hypocrisy of those who default to judgment and condemnation.

 

[JimG]

My youthful indiscretions never showed up on the Internet. That was then. Most of them were not even disclosed to my parents until, say, 10 years after the fact, if a particular conversational subject arose–in private.

Now of course, we have returned to the practice of public confession–through social media. And people thought Catholics were strange for telling their sins only to a priest in the privacy and anonymity of a confessional!

 

[57classic]

I am much more interested in how the person in question is currently behaving than in what that person did in high school. Everyone has something they would really prefer no one else knows or remembers. The important thing is are they still doing those thing or did they learn from the consequenses.

 

[stanmaxkolbe]

I think it depends on what it is. I’ve done stupid stuff in my younger days we all have.

Now if there is some politician that molested a kid or something along those grounds and there is proof—stuff like that I won’t let that go.

If it’s about getting drunk at party years ago doing something stupid I could care less about that.

When Bill Clinton said he didn’t inhale I was more concerned about his lying about it—if he would have just said, “Yeah in college I smoked a joint.” I think most Americans don’t care about that.

On the other hand the LSM [Lame Stream Media] will demand all Republicans must be free of all sin.

 

[zdon011]

Even though I never go to parties where there is alcohol and hence am unlikely to be ‘caught’ on camera in a situation I would regret, I still make a point of not posting regular/recent photos of myself. Though I do admit to the occasional guilty pleasure of trawling through some of the pictorial indiscretions of other FB users:tsktsk: