I have no dog in the current Markos firestorm. I know little of this blogger, little of the movement that has grown out of her experiences, and am not particularly passionate about Markos' opinions on the matter.
But the storm itself is fascinating.
First, it's worth trying to figure out what is the cause. Markos wrote a post in which he dismissed an attempt to create a voluntary bloggers ethical code. He, in a front page post claiming that was the point of his post.
The crux of opposition seems to come out of this comment:
"Look, if you blog, and blog about controversial shit, you'll get idiotic emails. Most of the time, said 'death threats' don't even exist -- evidenced by the fact that the crying bloggers and journalists always fail to produce said 'death threats'. I suspect many are like this gem I recently received."
Was he dismissing her claims? Questioning her honesty? Doubting her veracity? All possible. For the sake of argument I'm going to assume that he was in fact implicitly challenging her honesty.
If so, what is the big deal? It may have been impolite or impolitic, but did he have any duty to believe her?
I might think that he did if he was a friend to whom she was going to for advice. But her story was being used for political purposes - the creation of this bloggers code. Once a story enters the realm of politics I tend to think that its veracity automatically becomes fair game. Political discourse is dangerously undermined when commentary and debate is undermined by the need to imply civility. That's, it seems to me, is why politicians (and reporters) are so reluctant to accuse opponents of overtly lying.
Might it have been nice if Markos was sympathetic? Sure. Was it an unnecessary and inflammatory aside that did more harm then good to his underlying point? Sure. Was it poorly written? No doubt. It could have been a different post and a more effective post. But I just fail to see that he had any duty to write that other post instead.
In the end, what bothers me most, even taking what he said in the worst possible light, is the apparent assumption that a story that is being used for political purposes should be presumed to be true because it came from a woman and women face sexism. That seems infantilizing and insulting to me.