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A Blogger’s Manifesto

By so many, to so few

by Eric Ringmar
Anthem Press, 148pp, ££8.99,

Christopher Howse

Wednesday, 9th January 2008

Christopher Howse reviews a selection of books on the internet

When the college authorities told him to remove the offending blog, lest it be picked up by the media and damage his department, he appealed to the director of the LSE, Sir Howard Davies, who replied, ‘The issue here is not a policy on blogging, it is whether a colleague can publicly abuse his employer and his colleagues without consequences.’ The papers did pick up the row, and eventually Ringmar had to go.

Ringmar whines that his right to free speech was being trampled on, he was being censored and intimidated. But these were not his only blogging indiscretions. In his very first blogs, he says, he ‘made up a story about Sir Howard Davies, a few choirboys and the Catholic Church. None of it was true of course.’ What was true was an admission he also posted online: ‘I never actually read Being and Time, you know, I only pretended to.’ The book in question is Martin Heidegger’s most important work, about which he was supposed to have taught his pupils. Naturally Ringmar thinks that ‘such admissions are surely perfectly innocent’, as if it was the admission, not the original deception that people disliked.

Ringmar is not the first person to lose his job because of what he wrote on his blog. There is a word for it — being dooced. Someone called Heather Armstrong coined it in 2002, when she was sacked for writing about work and colleagues on her blog, Dooce.com. Since then she hasn’t looked back. Her blog is badly written, unfunny and embarrassing, with pictures of her daughter and her dog in a wig, but as she points out,

Perhaps Ringmar, who now lives in Taiwan, might find similar joy, but it does not alter the fact that blogs, with or without ads, are no more than a means of communication. Why should you think it all right to write, ‘The boss is a bastard’ on your blog, if you hesitate to shout it outside his office door? However, Ringmar takes self-righteousness to extremes, arguing that a girlfriend should not complain if a blog reveals that she has a sexually transmitted disease.

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