Liar liar pants on fire

Who knew? Until I started researching for this post, I had no idea that William Blake, the poet, was the likely source of this colorful and catchy phrase. In his 1810 poem, The Liar, he phrases it somewhat more elegantly: Deceiver, dissembler/Your trousers are alight. In any event, this colorful phrase comes to mind in this campaign season. The Tampa Bay Times maintains a useful non-partisan site called PolitiFact that fact checks the candidates' claims, with ratings on a truth-o-meter that has a setting called Pants-on-fire for the most outrageously untrue claims.

Blogging and Politics, a brave new world

So, John Edwards, Democratic presidential candidate, hired two bloggers for his campaign. Then it became obvious that they had been outspoken and perhaps crude in their choice of words in some blog posts they had made before they worked for him. This post in Thomas Scoble's blog outlines the original issue and makes some comments on Edwards' situation now. He also suggests some things to think about when blogging for work. Would it be better to make only neutral comments, or does that make a blogger boring? How much does an employer need to know about your past before considering hiring you, and how does your past web presence affect your new job? Is only the opinion of the blogging community important to bloggers? As blogging matures, there will be lots of related questions to consider.