Health Care BS

For most of human history, our injudicious utterances were recorded only in the memories of those unfortunate enough to be within earshot when we decided to start talking. Since the advent of the internet, however, our dumbest effusions are permanently preserved for the perusal of anyone sufficiently masochistic to read them. The unpleasant consequences of this have recently been felt by Flea, and are about to be experienced by President Bush’s nominee for the position of Surgeon General.  

The blogosphere is, of course, already abuzz about Dr. Holsinger’s 1991 writings concerning the medical implications of homosexuality, and I’ll leave it to others to pass judgment on whether they disqualify him to be the country’s chief health educator.  What interests me is a question that applies to both the SG controversy and the Flea episode: How does having our impolitic opinions preserved in amber affect the public discourse? 

Opinions, like those orifices about which Dr. Holsinger so injudiciously wrote, are issued indiscriminately throughout the population. At one time, however, they weren’t the liability they seem to have become. Electronic media and the internet have converted them into fossils that may well be dug up and put on public display at very inconvenient times. Will that eventually cause the public square to go silent?