BabyGate and internet culture

Continued from the Sarah Palin thread (http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=44354).

So, "BabyGate" is now clearly over. Photos of a pregnant Palin have emerged, and the two photos of her daughter with something of a "bump" have been debunked. The former was originally used by the paper in 2006. The latter, allegedly shot a few months before her fifth son's April 18 birthday, takes place outside on the deck of the family home and , it is my understanding, Alaska in February involves snow and parkas not green ground and t-shirts!

The whole mini-storm interests me as a matter of internet culture. And please I am not being partisan!*

The story is an interesting interplay between authority and amateurism.

1. The original piece was a Daily Kos "diary," a basically un-vetted contribution by an anonymous member. But it spread in part by being credited to the Daily Kos, often as "reported" by it. As such, it had some of the advantages of both.

2. From the very first, Kos commenters raised questions—both factual and moral. They also dug up evidence against it, evidence eventually sufficient to quash it. Score one for internet culture.

3. Good evidence is now out there. If this evidence had been there to start, the rumor would never have gotten off the ground. But now a shift has taken place. From a rather fanciful but not prima facie wrong conspiracy theory, "BabyGate" has now become gospel truth to some. To those people, the onus now on Palin's supporters to prove the story false, and, when presented with good evidence, some are taking refuge in "Well, there's something fishy there!" Worse, there's every indication that this rumor will continue to spread, long after it was debunked, like Obama's "Muslim religion." Score one against the internet culture.

See below: Apparently there WAS something there. I stand corrected. While I think it's pretty clear that the first story was wrong—and pretty rough stuff!—the internet forced the truth into the open even so. That's interesting.

4. Although amateurs dug it up, a lot of the critical evidence was "authoritative." Somebody's Flickr photos—from an account just opened and with self-evidently wrong camera dates—couldn't prove the point. But newspaper archives could. Speaking from Portland, Maine, which may lose its daily paper for good soon, this is a worrying reality. I'm as pro-internet culture as anyone I know, but the decline of newspapers may usher in silly season. Well, okay, make silly season even sillier :)

I'd be interested to know what others think of this, not as politics, but as an item of internet culture.

*I don't think you'll find a single LibraryThing post where I am actually being partisan, although I am occasionally mistaken for it.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13050.html

Sarah Palin just announced her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

Even if the dates on the flickr page were wrong, one could easily tell that she isn't pregnant with piper, her second youngest. Given that the photograph is relatively new, one must conclude that she was in fact carrying Trig. If not that, then what other explanation could there be?

Here's a new twist in the story of this family. I'm glad to see abstinence is working well for them.

Here's a new twist in the story of this family. I'm glad to see abstinence is working well for them.

Of course you are, geneg. A good Christian like yourself wouldn't have it any other way.

(Second attempt. Talk was broken.)

Actually, this originally showed up in the rumor mill at the same time that Gov. Palin announced to most everyone's surprise that she was seven months pregnant. Here is a reddit from back then.

You need a step 0. where something appears on the web but is localized or dormant until circumstances call it out.

Ha, that's great. I think it's pretty clear the first story was wrong--the Trig story--but it unearthed the second story. That too is interesting—internet culture stumbling its way to truth, though slander (I think) but ultimately to truth.

Comment?

Tim, it's very Hayekian.

Libel. (Sarah Palin would be hard, lacking actual malice, but against Bristol.) IANAL.

I thought the Internet was post-modern: it's not about little local truths, but the meta-narrative. :)

I stand corrected. Some digging, though, and I was surprised the print/spoken line is no longer really applicable.

If you want serious slime, though, here's a diagram of the family tree in which Todd is the father of his daughter's child. What newspaper would have ever printed that!

What about the Scenario D: That all this is the work of Man/Bear/Pig. Al Gore first alerted us to this problem and we did not listen. But now his plan is being unveiled. I'm super-serious about this and no one is listening to me!

Sorry...too much Southpark.

>1 timspalding: "I don't think you'll find a single LibraryThing post where I am actually being partisan" -Tim

Oh, please, Tim! Your every third post reads like the manifesto for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

I've always imagined you as a moderate conservative, Tim, one that is capable of keeping his partisan inclinations to a bare minimal.

Yeah, I'm not going there. I just don't like being pigeon-holed when I say something positive about either side, or particularly negative about attacks.

I wish I could find the Nabokov quote where he wishes there was, basically, a sign for :)

Found it:

"I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile -- some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question." — from Strong Opinions

Ooh. I like that. I know way too many High Culture freaks that are going to have to be pissed that Nabokov is the father of emoticons.

I would like to take a moment to break form and say that Nabokov is simply DA BOMB!

More seriously, I think Nabokov's light-touch, open, non-political and deeply playful postmodernism anticipates the web wonderfully. The humorless postmodernism of everyone else turned out to be a big, boring dead-end.

And lo! I found a whole article on Nabokov on typographical issues—http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=Nabokov's+Typographic+Poetics:+Transparent+Things&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 (use HTML, PDF seems gone).

I've always been a bit more fond of Borges...

>21 Jesse_wiedinmyer: He's my favorite reactionary.

It's another case of teh internet being both better and worse than traditional media. Maybe just larger.

If you have sufficiently large number of stories some of them will be right be chance - the question is how do you know in advance.

re >19 timspalding:
The difference being that Nabokov was also a "content provider".

(How I've always disliked that term. And now I've applied it to one of the authors I admire most. I'm out of here, penance beckons...)

The comments are through the roof on most websites which features any content whatsoever related to Palin. My political memory is rather short, but doesn't anyone remember Clinton receiving such scrutiny or disapprobation?