The French do some things right...

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 9:41 PM 1/26/96, David Mandl wrote:

>As has been pointed out here before, a lot of people are going to be
>getting in trouble for things they posted to obscure newsgroups or mailing
>lists four years ago.  How do I make sure that I get credit for something
>I've posted, but avoid the Alta Vista police?  There are a few feeble
>solutions, like:

One thing I have been hoping for as America's scandal-fixated society asks
whether Bill inhaled, whether Rush has a mistress, whether Madonna's
grandmother is really shacked up with a 19-year-old musician...one thing I
have been hoping for is that the American public will say "Enough!"

Not that they will call for the ban of tools like Alta Vista, or a law
against using one's past posts to alt.sex.barney as a consideration during
hiring, but that people will just wake up to the triviality of it all.

The French seem to have partially done this. Francois Mitterand had a
mistress? Who cares? They take it for granted that people are people, with
human foibles and weaknesses.

The way the U.S. public and/or the media machine is devouring political
candidates for minor transgressions, the blander are our candidates.

Could this happen, could people get beyond the minor transgressions and
foibles and just shrug off the petty scandals that seem to be fodder for
"daytime t.v."? Maybe.

And with search engines digging up "controversial" posts from the past,
some amount of shrugging is probably better than using some ancient post to
veto the hiring of a mostly-qualified candidate. (Again, I would never
support a law banning the browsing of one's past public record, but I would
say that wise businesses will appropriate discount such records.)

It's rare that I have something positive to say about the French, so this
is my rare tip 'o the hat to them.

--Tim


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