After Nancy Pelosi's hit-and-run diary last night (how many does that make it, again), I've seen folks in DallasDoc's diary bemoan the fact that if she can't take the heat of a dKos grillin', tough. After all, Pelosi is getting a "free advertisement" by posting a diary here.
Point taken. But the point that we seem to miss is that we have the ability to control availability and viewership of those advertisements.
How do we do that, you may ask? It's called the recommend button.
For instance, if people are mad with yet another Pelosi drive-by diary, then don't recommend it. In fact, because such diaries seem to be in the realm "advertisments" anyway, I suggest we don't recommend politician diaries AT ALL, except in cases that in which the politician (or a member of their staff)in question actually ENGAGES in the discussion.
Jack and Jimmy Carter come to mind. We had a former President actually answer OUR questions. How about that? Certainly, if the former President wants to drop by, I'll recommend him up.
But we seem to forget ourselves when it comes to politicians. One of the community standards here is that a characterstic of a good diary deserving of recommendation is that the diarist hangs around to comment and answer questions.
So why do we hold Joe Blow to that standard, but not Nancy Pelosi or Russ Feingold? Just because they are an elected?
Nah, I say. This place is for DIALOGUE. And the former President got that. So did Paul Hackett, if I remember correctly.
So, if you feel a politician that drops by here has a history of hitting-and-running, don't recommend the diary. We are self-policing here, and we control whether there campaign commercials get the equivalent of a prime-time ad slot or a slot on local radio station.
Until politicians want to ENGAGE us, I say we shouldn't INDULGE them.
UPDATE: Is Pelosi starting to get it? You be the judge...and recommend if you think so.
After all, her new diary is entitled "Open Ears".
UPDATE II: Moved this to the bottom instead of top because I didn't want to diary, as a whole, to be about Leader Pelosi per se. That, and people obviously know she posted again by this point.