Tattle-Tale Newspaper Costs Vulgar Commenter His Job
A St. Louis schools employee made a juvenile, vulgar joke in the comments section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, anonymously. Soon, he was out of a job because an offended newspaper editor hunted him down and called his bosses.
Way to win reader trust, Post-Dispatch!
The employee's comment was just one word: "Pussy." It was a stupid response to a stupid blog post, entitled "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?" The joke was a groaner, to be sure. And one that was annoyingly re-posted once after administrators deleted it. But the comment posed no threat to anyone or anything other than perhaps good taste. So it's bizarre how far the author of the post to which it was attached went next: The author, , Kurt Greenbaum,looked at the IP address on the comment, associated it with a local school, called the school and forwarded them all data on the commenter.
Then, Greenbaum later wrote, the guy got busted:
The school's IT director took a shine to the challenge... he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.
Score one for Greenbaum! Now St. Louis-ians won't dumbly assume they can speak anonymously to the local paper, or that newspaper staffers, of all people, might have some sympathy for the soon-to-be unemployed. And we can't imagine anyone else hurling the word "Pussy" at Kurt Greenbaum again. Because this is clealry a guy with a thick skin.
