Blog in: Death by blogs

Advertising agency WPP’s Creative Director and legendary copy writer Neil French’s ads for Chivas Regal read, “Luckily, by the time you gain the experience to appreciate it, you should be able to afford it.”

French, if anyone, has the experience to appreciate the power of an evolving medium. But even he couldn’t afford being at the receiving end of it. When he quit two weeks ago from one of ad industry’s most high profile positions, he termed the incident, ‘death by blog’.

He had to quit over certain remarks he made about women. At a dinner where the participants paid to hear him, he reportedly said he thought women creatives were “slacker-breeders” who would at some stage inevitably “wimp out and go suckle something”.

Many would have felt agitated by the remarks. But French was too big a fish to be bothered. Until Nancy Vonk, Co-Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy Toronto and long time friend of Neil, posted a 1,377 word post on her blog, that was. All hell broke loose. It will suffice to say, that Neil had to quit.

Bloggers generally tend to favour the underdog. And since political correctness mostly comprises of not hurting the feelings of the underdog, being politically incorrect is likely to get punished in the blogosphere.

Of the participants in the blog survey conducted by the MIT media labs, 59% were undergrad, 26.2% held a masters and 4.9% were PhDs.
With the bulk of the blogosphere being a fairly educated lot, it has a good grasp of history and her injustices whose victims are the today beneficiaries (?) of politically correct behaviour.

Let us not miss the difference it is making to our lives. French is unlikely to have made those remarks if a New York Times reporter was present in the front row (the row they are usually present). What has changed is that the guy who is going to cost you your job by telling the world your real stinking opinions, may be sitting in the back row.

Now if that means that you can never be sure about expressing your real opinions without being prepared to lose your job (or whatever), is the blogosphere’s net impact on freedom of expression positive?

Blog-in is DNA’s weekly take on the Blogosphere