Why I love the Internet.
May. 17th, 2009 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseLocal Bus Tour Complaints Reframed as Anti-Palin Campaign
Short version, with background for non-Juneau residents: Most of the houses in downtown Juneau, including the Governor's Mansion, are on these tiny little windy streets that you can barely fit two cars side by side (and that, quite often, people park along one side of). Lots of local tour places take large buses full of cruise ship passengers along these tiny little windy streets to see the Governor's Mansion, thus causing all kinds of noise and traffic issues. Perhaps fearing a large increase of these tours spurred by our current governor's explosion onto the national stage, lots of residents of downtown Juneau have (quite understandably) started to put up "Stop Local Tours" signs in protest of this practice.
Somehow, in the blogosphere, this morphed into (and I quote from the article):
Chip Thoma, a convicted felon and drunk driver from Juneau, has a grudge against Gov. Sarah Palin and/or despises 8-year-old Piper Palin's lemonade stand, so as a veiled attack on them he mounted a grassroots campaign to eradicate bus tours in Juneau. Flaming, hyperbolic outrage ensues.
And, because everyone knows blogs are the New News Media, elements of this "story" have been leaking back into the mainstream news, and even the Empire's getting hate mail:
One reader - or letter writer, at least - from a far-flung end of the country wrote expletive-infused hate mail threatening the Empire's staff with physical injury for picking on Piper Palin and her lemonade stand, despite the fact that there's been nary a mention of either in these pages, save an Empire photographer's unrelated, incidental photo of the lemonade stand snapped with the governor's permission.
Why do I love the Internet? Because, with a medium for exchanging information (and misinformation) so quickly, it brings both the best and the worst of humanity to light in increasingly wonderful (and hilarious) ways. One hopes that, sooner or later, people will adapt to the onslaught of unfiltered content and learn to question what they read before reacting to it. Eventually.
Short version, with background for non-Juneau residents: Most of the houses in downtown Juneau, including the Governor's Mansion, are on these tiny little windy streets that you can barely fit two cars side by side (and that, quite often, people park along one side of). Lots of local tour places take large buses full of cruise ship passengers along these tiny little windy streets to see the Governor's Mansion, thus causing all kinds of noise and traffic issues. Perhaps fearing a large increase of these tours spurred by our current governor's explosion onto the national stage, lots of residents of downtown Juneau have (quite understandably) started to put up "Stop Local Tours" signs in protest of this practice.
Somehow, in the blogosphere, this morphed into (and I quote from the article):
Chip Thoma, a convicted felon and drunk driver from Juneau, has a grudge against Gov. Sarah Palin and/or despises 8-year-old Piper Palin's lemonade stand, so as a veiled attack on them he mounted a grassroots campaign to eradicate bus tours in Juneau. Flaming, hyperbolic outrage ensues.
And, because everyone knows blogs are the New News Media, elements of this "story" have been leaking back into the mainstream news, and even the Empire's getting hate mail:
One reader - or letter writer, at least - from a far-flung end of the country wrote expletive-infused hate mail threatening the Empire's staff with physical injury for picking on Piper Palin and her lemonade stand, despite the fact that there's been nary a mention of either in these pages, save an Empire photographer's unrelated, incidental photo of the lemonade stand snapped with the governor's permission.
Why do I love the Internet? Because, with a medium for exchanging information (and misinformation) so quickly, it brings both the best and the worst of humanity to light in increasingly wonderful (and hilarious) ways. One hopes that, sooner or later, people will adapt to the onslaught of unfiltered content and learn to question what they read before reacting to it. Eventually.
