When Good Blogs Go "Bad"

Great piece over at Wired about the problems that the new blog world pose for political campaigns. Sure, here at Mandate Media, we've been advising campaigns to link freely to supportive blogs and other alt-sites. But what do you do when a blog goes off-message?

It all came up earlier this year, when the Daily Kos had a rather insensitive post about the deaths of some mercenaries (er, contractors) in Iraq. Naturally, a big hairy controversy ensued - and the Kerry campaign yanked their link to the Kos.

Wired's Adam Penenberg poses the question: "After all, just because you link to a site, does it mean that you stand by its content? Does it imply an implicit endorsement? If that’s the case, then how can the Kerry campaign justify linking to other sites that post material that is arguably just as off-color?"

Our view? Sure, you shouldn't link to people you completely disagree with - but harsh language or an insensitive, dumb comment from someone who's otherwise an ally? Let it be... Everyone's entitled to be dumb once in a while - and it's gotta be OK for friends to disagree now and then.