Tara Servatius has long seemed to revel in low-level discourse, so we suspect it wasn't conscience that prompted her to resign from the conservative John Locke Foundation this week after posting a truly detestable photo of President Barack Obama in chains and high heels with a bucket of fried chicken.
John Hood, president of the foundation, provided some easy lines to read between regarding how Servatius became an ex-Locke blogger. "Earlier this week," Hood said on his Facebook page, "a freelancer who blogs at the John Locke Foundation's Charlotte site posted a piece about President Obama's opposition to North Carolina's marriage amendment. It included an illustration that was offensive and utterly inappropriate for our blog or anyone else's. A reader brought it to my attention yesterday, and I had it removed immediately, but the damage was done."
So Servatius likely got a nudge out the blogging door - or saw it coming. That's not only an appropriate thing, but a heartening thing. If you saw the photo, which went locally viral this week, you probably shook your head at the depths to which our discourse has fallen. It's not hard to find ugliness out there, if that's what you're looking for, but it's jarring to find it in places where you expect a reasonable exchange of ideas.
[Update, 3:48 p.m.: In a statement to the Observer moments ago, Servatius apologized for the controversy but insisted she meant no offense by the photo.
Do we wish that a staffer at the Locke Foundation had preemptively stopped the photo from ever disgracing the site? Sure. But in this understaffed, shoot-first-and-edit-later digital media universe, perhaps the best we can expect is the sort of self-policing that our community provided here.
As for Servatius, once one of Charlotte's most dogged reporters: The former WBT talk radio host/Meck Deck blogger is running out of platforms to belch from. The beauty of the First Amendment is that she can rev up a new blog anytime she wants, maybe even for an employer willing to laugh at her next Obama joke. The rest of us can applaud the John Locke Foundation - whether we agree with its politics or not - for affirming that even in this open, raucous exchange of voices we treasure, there are still places we don't want to go.
Peter St. Onge
John Hood, president of the foundation, provided some easy lines to read between regarding how Servatius became an ex-Locke blogger. "Earlier this week," Hood said on his Facebook page, "a freelancer who blogs at the John Locke Foundation's Charlotte site posted a piece about President Obama's opposition to North Carolina's marriage amendment. It included an illustration that was offensive and utterly inappropriate for our blog or anyone else's. A reader brought it to my attention yesterday, and I had it removed immediately, but the damage was done."
So Servatius likely got a nudge out the blogging door - or saw it coming. That's not only an appropriate thing, but a heartening thing. If you saw the photo, which went locally viral this week, you probably shook your head at the depths to which our discourse has fallen. It's not hard to find ugliness out there, if that's what you're looking for, but it's jarring to find it in places where you expect a reasonable exchange of ideas.
[Update, 3:48 p.m.: In a statement to the Observer moments ago, Servatius apologized for the controversy but insisted she meant no offense by the photo.
I also wanted to add that, at the time, I was searching for a picture of the president in drag to illustrate his Southern political strategy of courting young voters, a majority of whom support gay marriage. It was one of the first photos to come up on Google Images. Regrettably, I didn't think about the racial implications of the picture when I posted it. I simply don't think in those terms. Unfortunately some people do.But what happened, eventually, was what should have happened. An offensive post went up on a blog. People complained. Someone in charge realized that a threshold had been crossed.
To me, fried chicken is simply a Southern cuisine. So the picture seemed perfect to illustrate Obama's Southern strategy.]
Do we wish that a staffer at the Locke Foundation had preemptively stopped the photo from ever disgracing the site? Sure. But in this understaffed, shoot-first-and-edit-later digital media universe, perhaps the best we can expect is the sort of self-policing that our community provided here.
As for Servatius, once one of Charlotte's most dogged reporters: The former WBT talk radio host/Meck Deck blogger is running out of platforms to belch from. The beauty of the First Amendment is that she can rev up a new blog anytime she wants, maybe even for an employer willing to laugh at her next Obama joke. The rest of us can applaud the John Locke Foundation - whether we agree with its politics or not - for affirming that even in this open, raucous exchange of voices we treasure, there are still places we don't want to go.
Peter St. Onge
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