[Note: You're now getting the abridged version of this entry. In attempting to link to the 'digital brownshirts' speech of Al Gore's, now hosted on that fine purveyor of good political taste, MoveOn.Org, Adobe Acrobat crashed my editing window. What follows is much less ornate, but largely the same argument.

For those who don't want to read it all, the short answer: it's a bit rich for MoveOn.Org and their supporters to wax poetic on how horrible it is to tar the organization as the kind that would make a Bush/Hitler analogy when their front-page headline is a link to Al Gore calling the President's minions "'brownshirts'. [1]]

In my previous entry on the George Bush/John Kerry 'Who's misusing the holocaust' entry, I was severely taken to task by several readers for having stated that the ads were from 'from a rather infamous Moveon.org advertisement.' The counterarguments have variously raised that (a) the ad was not 'sponsored' by MoveOn.org; that (b) they withdrew the ads and 'apologized'; or that (c) they did not represent views that could be attributed to MoveOn.org sufficient to call them a 'MoveOn.org advertisement.' I have to admit, to me it's a rather unexpected avenue of defense of the organization, particularly from some, such as my friend Martin, who have sufficient marketing and internet background that they should at least recognize MoveOn's responsibility.

Had I the chance to write it over again, I'd probably change the phrasing to indicate that it was a contest entry. Nonetheless, I'm happy to stand by the original assertion, given that I knew of the contest at the time, and didn't consider it a stretch to attribute them to MoveOn. To demonstrate why, I'll illustrate the way in which I responsible for comments here at TYoH--if only to show that I hold to the same standards. In so doing, I'll also cover a couple of the peripheral issues that surround this dispute, and the subsequent Bush ad.

Were the Ads 'Move On' Ads?
Simply put, MoveOn would like to disclaim responsibility for the advertisements because:

None of these was our ad, nor did their appearance constitute endorsement or sponsorship by MoveOn.org Voter Fund. They will not appear on TV. We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions. They were voted down by our members and the public, who reviewed the ads and submitted nearly 3 million critiques in the process of choosing the 15 finalist entries.

We agree that the two ads in question were in poor taste and deeply regret that they slipped through our screening process. In the future, if we publish or broadcast raw material, we will create a more effective filtering system.

I sponsor each and every comment made on Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil. Indeed, there's little way for me not to do so.

This is simply a matter of how the site is structured. I pay for hosting (including the annual payment to be made tomorrow), I pay for the software that I use to create it, and I pay for any residual expenses that I incur. If you're posting a comment here, it's riding on my dime. Does that mean I agree with everything on here? Given the amount of personal criticism I get from my comments, the answer is either a solid 'no,' or I'm the most self-loathing blogger ever to set up shop. Nonetheless, I sponsor them: if it weren't for me, and the money I've spent, these discussions would not be here.

Now, what goes for me goes triple for MoveOn.Org. I'm a relatively tiny website, with a law student's time and budget, and my posts try to invite a relatively open conversation from both sides of the political aisle. On the other hand, MoveOn.Org has a membership far beyond my possible grasp. They sponsored a contest with an express purpose of opposing an individual candidate. Further, they set up a website, provided thousands of MB of valuable bandwidth, and put their brand to bear behind hundreds of adverts. For this reason alone, I'd be happy to call them MoveOn.Org ads. The fact that they're part of a 'contest' does not mean that they appeared from some marketing equivalent of abiogenesis.

But Why Would MoveOn.Org Be Responsible?
In all of the discussion of this, the issues and facts have gotten fairly blurred, made ever more difficult by the fact that MoveOn.Org, Moveon's Voter Fund, and Bushin30Seconds all have different websites, with different pieces of the puzzle on them. None of it makes it entirely clear what exactly happened, so I'll give you the two relevant scenarios, both put in the light most favorable to MoveOn.

Scenario One
MoveOn.Org sets up the entire apparatus of a contest website, puts aside the bandwidth and purchases the URL. They plan, design, and put aside various amounts of funds and manpower for their contest, and promise to book SuperBowl time for the winner. (That they didn't get it is a bit irrelevant here.) After all of this, they put absolutely no screening process or editorial control on their site before the ads are made available for download. A few days later, after complaints, they take down the offending ads.

Now, if this is true, the people responsible for this campaign, all the way up the line, should have the words "INTERNET NEWBIE" tattooed on their scalp, a full copy of Godwin's Law tattooed on their ass, a dunce cap superglued to their scalp, and special laws passed to make sure none of them can get near a keyboard again. This--and I hope Martin would agree--is just dumb. Given MoveOn's size, the fervor of its adherents, and heck, just the open nature of the internet, you would have no idea what you would be spewing out from your server an hour after you launched the site. The legal ramifications would be galling, much less the publicity risks. [Update 1]

But, I hear you ask, isn't that what you do with your comments section here on TYoH? Well, sure but it's a risk I take consciously and conscientiously. This is a small-scale site, most of whose readership is either friends or other law students, on average an educated, moderate, and cautious bunch. I figure my chances of anyone posting anything that would make me lose a spectacular amount of face is low. (I'm not even a student senate candidate.) And if such were to occur, removal would be as swift as I could make it, a ban on that user as complete as technology allows, and an apology unqualified. This site is my responsibility, and you should expect nothing less. I've already banned users, or in some cases written an offended party and asked if they wanted the entry taken down or a chance to rebut it.

But I'm not a highly-funded political organization doing its utmost to unseat a President. What is allowable for me is foolish in such a situation. Indeed, both Bush's blog (which has no comments) and Kerry's blog (which requires registration) recognize this in exercising editorial control. (Come to think of it, Kerry's blog still hasn't given me a password. Go figure.) The large companies I worked with when I was in the web business all recognized this as a risk when we pushed interactive solutions at them.

This isn't brain surgery. If MoveOn were truly worried about this kind of thing, I can't believe they'd not put editorial control in place. If Kerry was so worried about such things, he'd not have hired Move On's web guru Zach Exley to manage his online campaign. The risk is just too big.

(Mr. J. responds to this argument as follows: "Umm, maybe that would be because he's a web-guru, and he's being hired to be a web-guru, while the error/lapse of judgment/naivete in the MoveOn situation was one of political savvy & strategy, not one of technical ability." This would be suitable if either (a) Exley were a techy and not a strategist, and (b) if this were a small mistake. Besides, I've been a web-guru, complete with the silly moniker 'Internet Strategist': predicting these things is the job description. Seriously, this was very basic. It almost transcends the bounds of belief that it could be a 'mistake.')

Scenario Two
Roughly the same the above, except that between submission and uploading, somehow the two entries just 'slipped through.' This is slightly more favorable to MoveOn, but only slightly. One reader (Martin, actually) suggested that they may have felt no choice--that this was a 'freedom of speech' issue. But of course, freedom of speech just means that you're not to be censored by the government, not that a publisher bears no responsibility for what he chooses to publish. You can't say, "Hey, it was a contest, freedom of speech, nothing to do with me, Guv." Especially when you're footing the bill.

The only other ways its slips through is if (a) the guidelines were inspecific enough ('nothing uncivil', for instance, and your reviewer is a kid who thinks Hitler analogies are fair play), or (b) your guidelines were thorough, but not implemented correctly. Both would be species of carelessness, but neither would absolve the fact that MoveOn put them online and distributed them. In which case, I'd say their opinions didn't reflect my own opinions: what MoveOn has done. But it wouldn't invalidate the Bush campaign's complaints--I let the genie out of the bottle. They wouldn't stop them from being my ads, just as any comment that appears here is a TYoH comment.

Would I hope that if something like that got posted on my site, I'd get a bit more slack? Sure. But on the other hand, as the debate on this site shows, I don't just flack for one side of the fence, my comments (or 'contests' if I ever had them) have room for both sides, and I'm willing to keep things civil. I like to think I've earned that deference. MoveOn, as one can see below, doesn't exactly have that right.

So Why Does This Say Anything About Kerry, Or MoveOn.Org?
So now someone is undoubtedly saying, "Wait, Tony, that doesn't sound right. You're defending someone calling someone else Hitler?" Well, no. However, I think that if a candidate makes an ad saying, "Some of those who support my opponent--people from whom he receives aid, support, and succor--compare me to Hitler," that's a whole different ballgame. Especially if some of them do. But of course, MoveOn.Org would never support such a thing--not on 'non-contest' pages, would it?

Erm... well. Let's take today's top headline off MoveOn.Org: "Al Gore: The Bush Administration is Destroying Democracy." This highly temperate, always civil speech was given to the American Constitution Society, recently host to Justice Calabresi's Hitler/Bush 'complex legal argument.' And right in the prepared remarks PDF, what does one find but:

The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops.

Most certainly Kerry could probably populate a similar ad, full of references comparing various Democrats, if not Kerry himself, to Hitler. And if he did, I'd say the same thing of him: he's probably right in saying that some do, and it would be a negative ad of stunningly bad tactical strategy. But it's not the same thing as making the original comparison--or publishing it under a 'contest.'

Was the Bush campaign disingenuous in failing to mention that MoveOn.Org pulled the ad mentioned? Hell yes. Was MoveOn.Org less than forthright in its protestations of innocence and 'apology?' Well, let's just say that I would have considered good manners to suggest an actual apology to Bush for making the comparison, were it felt so heinous I pulled the ad. And if the above two weren't telling the whole truth, well, what can we say about John Kerry's fundraising letter, which fails to mention any relationship between those images an MoveOn.Org at all? Certainly no party in this dispute is being a paragon of clarity. That, unfortunately, is politics today, and largely what I write my Ridiculous Bipartisanship about. But you can't have it both ways: if you're mad at the Bush campaign, the others are using the same playbook.

But can MoveOn disclaim responsibility for the ads? Hardly. Were it not for MoveOn, they would not have gotten the bandwidth they did, the audience they did, or the popularity they did. Everything here on TYoH is sponsored by me, unless you're paying me for ad space. I just don't see why anyone would excuse MoveOn.

[1]: And for those who object to me calling Bush's staff or helpers 'minions,' please remember that here at TYoH, the term is used with much fondness...

UPDATE 1: If you really need an example of the legal risks, think of the size of the site, its multi-state and multi-national readership, and what happens if someone uploads child porn. I'm certainly not expert enough to know for sure, but I know that I wouldn't take that kind of risk.