John 7:24

PoliBlog's Dr. Steven Taylor (yes, there is still such a thing as a sane and moderate conservative blogger) has a great post today in which he examines the faux-outrage on rightwing blogs about the idiot "Dick better Dead" crowd posting comments on liberal blogs.

A few brief responses: 1) it is contemptible to wish death on a fellow American because one has political differences with that person, 2) only someone unfamiliar with the internet (and, for that matter, human nature) would have been surprised by those comments, and 3) the idea that a blog would decide that a set of comments left on its site were highly offensive is not “rewriting history” it is using discretion in dealing with content left by third parties. Anyone who has run a blog for any amount of time has had to delete comments because they were offensive in a way that was beyond the pale.

before turning to some of the fallout from that outrage - to wit, a very unscientific (and shamlessly traffic-blegging) "survey" by one blogger that purports to show that liberal bloggers are more potty-mouthed than rightwingers by a ratio of 18 to one.

However, the 18:1 ratio is problematic as a descriptive statistic because it does not take into account the relative sizes of the blogs in question. To get a decent measure one would have to take into account the number of blog posts and comments. If I post 6 times a day and use 3 of the words in question that means that 50% of my posts in that period of time are profane, but if another blogger has 12 posts and uses those words 5 times, the percentage is 41.7%–so the first blog uses the words with greater frequency while the second blog has a higher absolute number of usages. This effect would be especially relevant for comments, as high-traffic blogs typically have hundreds and hundreds of comments which increases the potential chances of usages on those blogs. And what about blogs that do not have comments? You cannot reasonably compare DailyKos to InstaPundit in this study, despite the fact that they are both “big” blogs.

Steven takes in Kevin's Law on his way to his conclusion: "At the end of the day it would hardly be a shocker if leftish blogs use more profanity that rightish ones–but even if that is the case, what does it prove? Further, does one have to use profanity to be insulting and rude? I think not."

Sane and reasonable stuff which should be condoned and reinforced as good blogging practise. But I think I will try to get me some of that traffic-blegging snark instead - with tongue very firmly in cheek at all times.

Which brings me to the title of this post - John 7:24 "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment."

Surely what people DO is more important in judging them than what they SAY. One of the most important actions in any democracy is the way you vote - it gives the imprematur of your judgement as to which party will act the way you are most likely to agree with.

To that end, here's some unscientific Yahoo! searches to see where actions match potty-mouthed words.

Republican Corruption: 8,130,000 results
Democrat Corruption: 4,900,000 results

Republican Sex Scandal: 3,000,000 results
Democrat Sex Scandal: 1,870,000 results

Republican bribery: 1,140,000 results
Democrat bribery: 724,000 results

Republican drugs scandal: 1,560,000 results
Democrat drugs scandal: 955,000 results

Republican war: 40,200,000 results
Democrat war: 22,100,000 results

Republican arrested: 6,800,000 results
Democrat arrested: 3,940,000 results

The figures suggest (in an utterly unscientific way) that Republicans may watch their mouths when they speak or write, but are far more likely to DO what they don't talk about.

There, that should pour some gas on the fire...