[ButlerianJihad]

It only took 13 minutes for an account to bulls-eye exactly the incident I was referring to.

Sure, "fair game", whatever, how can you "censor" a grassroots parody/mockery like this? Part of the game was, it wasn't actually stoppable in any meaningful fashion.

It seems rude, unethical, puerile even, to do this name-calling and dragging through the mud, if you will, and it was perpetrated/spearheaded, so to speak, by a journalist whose morals and platform encouraged that sort of tactic.

I don't think "censorship" was a solution to that incident, and since Mr. Santorum was a politician then "fair game" is a meaningless circumscription.

But perhaps the whole episode should reflect more on the character of the originator, rather than the target?

[chuckadams]

> It seems rude, unethical, puerile even, to do this name-calling and dragging through the mud, if you will, and it was perpetrated/spearheaded, so to speak, by a journalist whose morals and platform encouraged that sort of tactic.

Dan Savage would howl with laughter at the notion of being called a journalist. The morals and platform of the target did most of the work.

[ButlerianJihad]

You're completely right, of course; Savage is an "advice columnist" and activist, not a journalist or investigator. I was familiar with his columns in the free-to-take rags out on the streets here.

It's nevertheless true that Savage didn't need to be a "journalist": he enjoyed a bully pulpit, a sizable cadre of fervent followers, and a powerful platform to launch his activist projects, and in the modern climate, a lot more sympathetic in mass media circles than Santorum's socially-conservative views and policies.

[chuckadams]

The "bully pulpit" of an advice columnist whose main distribution platform was The Onion is somewhat less prominent than that of a sitting United States Senator. I'll just leave it there.