A guy in my class has a myspace blog. It’s filled with homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, chauvinistic, and generally puerile verbiage. It’s vile, hateful, aggressive, and embarrassingly stupid. He uses words like “retard” and “gay” in their playground senses, unselfconsciously and without concern for the fact that his writing is available to everyone on the internet to see (and that it’s linked to his myspace profile, which helpfully lists his location and has a picture of him and generally allows anyone with 15 minutes available to figure out who he is).^*

Well, today I did something dumb but pretty excellent. I accidentally sent a link to this guy’s blog to my entire class’s listserv, noting that they should “check it out!”

I feel stupid for accidentally doing this (I replied to an email sent through the listserv, intending it to just go to the original sender, but instead sending it to everyone), but I certainly don’t feel bad about it. I mean, this incident is a perfect example of why bigoted jerks (especially the ones who hold out hope of getting a job someday) should probably keep their prejudiced screeds in private places. As additional evidence of this theory, I’ll just note that at least half of my class had probably already seen or heard about this guy’s blog, even before I accidentally outed him. If you write something sensitive, somebody’s going to read it. I promise.

I know, you’re all waiting for the link, but I’m not going to post it. I may not feel bad about my mistake, but that’s not the same as intentionally repeating it. At any rate, I’d like to believe that this guy’s gotten all the punishment he deserves and will think better of airing such garbage.

Is it hilarious and probably hubristic to post about this entire affair in my own blog? Yeah, I guess so. But, on the other hand, I think I’m a pretty open-minded guy and I’d be hardpressed to find too many examples of this kind of crap in my own writing. And I firmly believe in taking responsibility for your own behavior, certainly including the things you choose to say in public fora.

So let this be a lesson to you: if you write stupid stuff on your blog and think it won’t get out, well, you’re probably wrong.

^* Incidentally and unsurprisingly, he also has only a tenuous grasp of the meaning of “blog.” He says things like “I got a lot of comments on yesterday’s blog” when he really means “I got a lot of comments on yesterday’s post” (a lot of comments is never more than 5, FYI) or “I really regret yesterday’s blog, in which I compared a certain minority to a certain pastry” (not an actual quote, but really very plausible).

Marion Barry, former DC mayor and current member of the city council, tested positive for cocaine. In case you don’t remember, this is the same guy who got caught (while mayor) buying crack at a DC hotel and proclaimed of an associate, “bitch set me up!” And then, not long after that, he was reelected mayor! The man, in terms of DC politics, can dodge bullets (this didn’t prevent him from being robbed at gunpoint a couple weeks ago, however).

Barry is the Mike Tyson of the nation’s capital. And in the same way as with Tyson, while it’s funny to watch his life continually devolve into absurd catastrophe it’s also getting pretty hard to watch. Maybe if people stopped electing him to office he might stop getting high on the job and/or pay his taxes occasionally.

At any rate, I’m pretty sure this is the last ugly turn in his life I’m going to make fun of. From here on out it’s pity all the way.