The Democratic Party of the State of Florida has tunneled their way to a new low this week with a brazenly unveiled character attack on Adam Putnam. For those of you in one of the other 49, less sunshiny states, Adam Putnam is Florida’s political wunderkind. He became a congressman at the age of eight or so (ok, maybe he was 26) and recently launched his campaign to become the state’s next Commissioner of Agriculture. Congressman seems like a better gig to me, but what do I know?
Anyway, the Democratic Party of Florida took advantage of Wikipedia’s openly-editable model to make a little opinionated change to his entry. In case you don’t know what Wikipedia is, go buy yourself a computer. This isn’t the first time that a political hack job has been done on Wikipedia. Rush Limbaugh’s page infamously was changed a few years back. The price of an open source encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone is that it can be edited by anyone.
The big difference here is that this was not some basement dwelling malcontent with a grudge doing the editing. It wasn’t some left wing extremist working alone to vent his misanthropy. This was the work of the Democratic Party. The same group who is now opposed to protests is proudly using unsavory tactics and abusing the public trust to smear a campaign opponent.
It could have been anyone, you say? How, you may ask, can I be so sure that the Florida Democratic Party was behind the attack? THEY MADE SCREENSHOTS AND DISTRIBUTED THEM TO THE MEDIA. The party of the people has abandoned all pretense of civility to attack Polk County’s favorite son. Not that there’s a lot of competition for the title. Second place goes to NASCAR driver Joe Nemecheck, in case you were wondering.
Now that the Democratic Party of Florida has reached a new low, it probably won’t take long for someone from one side of the aisle or the other to burrow even deeper. I wonder if the press would be so quietly amused if someone changed Barbara Boxer’s or Nancy Pelosi’s Wikipedia entry. I’m thinking not so much.
