In a long post reflecting on his starring role in the now -familiar comment scandal at STLtoday.com, online editor Kurt Greenbaum attempted to explain his position on the matter, defending why he took action against a vulgar commenter on the Post’s message boards that ultimately led to the commenter resigning from his job because he posted a bad word online.
I think the whole affair is a case study in anger management. And here is my case:
Mr. Greenbaum’s explanation just does not add up. It’s like when a person gets caught in a lie, but rather than come clean, they just keep sticking to their story, no matter how ridiculous it becomes. I am not suggesting that Mr. Greenbaum is lying, but I do think he has made up his own ridiculous story to cover up what was probably, in hindsight, a gut reaction on his part that he never imagined would spiral into such a mess.
I think Mr. Greenbaum saw the “vulgar” post and got angry. He probably is deluged with tons of improper or offensive comments every day. It probably does get old. I think of it this way: You get cut off in traffic enough, and eventually you will fly a reactionary bird without looking at who you are flipping off. And sometimes you get away with that, and sometimes you flip off a cop. But as Stephen Bolen points out in a nice post on the matter, there are better ways of dealing with inappropriate content than random reactions.
On the comment in question, I think Mr. Greenbaum saw that the name of the school was right there on the comment’s email, and made the call that cost the commenter his job. It was an easy way to vent some anger. But he flipped off a cop. He reacted impulsively out of anger, and it blew up in his face, but since the comment was technically a violation of STLToday.com’s usage policy, he had that to hang his explanation on. The problem is, right along with his own reputation, he torpedoed the public’s confidence in STLToday.com.
And for the record, me saying it was just an angry over-reaction is not meant to be justification of his actions. They cost a man to lose his job for saying ‘pussy’, I don’t think that can be justified. But to say that he saw this as a teaching opportunity because the comment came from a school? That does not explain it for me. What difference does it make where it came from? Are we afraid that someone at a school who would say pussy could be a sex offender? Was he going to teach some kids it’s not polite to say bad words? No, I think he saw an easy target for his anger and temporarily lost sight of the possible repercussions, for both the commenter and his own site.
If the comment was from a law firm, do you think he would have called? He did not have to call the school either.
What do you think? Let me know with a comment.
