PSA: Double-u standard?

Well, the Washington Post has fired a reporter/blogger/op-ed contributor guy, David Wiegel, for writing in a private listserve email, among other things, "a joke about how the world would be a better place if Matt Drudge 'set himself on fire'."

This seems a bit like exiling the little boy who pointed out the Emporer was naked. I'm kind of disappointed he didn't put it on the official blog.

Technically, Wiegel resigned, and technically, the Post accepted the resignation after it was also revealed he'd said something about Rush Limbaugh dying and conservatives trying to "violently, angrily divide America." And technically, the Post declared that they weren't against opinions, per se, just against "the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to their work."

So...only the completely unconflicted are allowed to offer their opinions to the Post...which explains why they rushed to defend Drudge, actually.

The fact that these amount to a firing based on offering opinions in a non-public forum by a guy they hired partly to express his opinions (on conservative issues, no less) doesn't seem to bother the people at the Post who fired him. And I understand: the Post competes with the Washington Times for conservative readers, and this is a savvy business decision to help the Post seem less like the demonic liberal media Times readers probably feel it is. But let's not pretend it's not a choice of business savvy over free speech, because that's definitely what it is. And let's not ignore that defending Matt Drudge's freedom to say whatever damn stupid thing he wants by firing a guy who only said extreme things in private email rather than ranting them in public, is definitely a sign of conflict in the Post's business plan.

Perhaps people shouldn't be allowed to say, in any context, what seems obviously to be the truth (that the world would probably be better off without firebrand conservatives yelling at people without any solutions to the problems they're pointing out or compassion for the people they would affect), if they're working in journalism.

But it seems obvious instead that Fox News is winning here, and making the Washington Post into Switzerland won't help the paper survive. Kowtowing to conservatives who reserve the right to be jerks in public only for themselves will help the paper fade into the background, bird-cage-liner it seems to want to be, instead.

And heck -- like Wiegel with the conservatives he denigrated in email -- I'm saying this as a fan of the Post.

Imagine what Matt Drudge would say.