Job-blog jitters

Since this is an outlet for what exercises my brain, and since I am now ineluctably on the other side of the academic looking glass, a natural topic source would be my exploits on the quads. As a prof I'm just getting started, but I've already got quite a potential backlog.

Don't expect to read anything scholastic here any time soon.

It's bad enough to hear about all the poor shmucks in corporate gigs - the forces behind Dooce, Petite Anglaise, and a couple dozen other blogs - who got canned for their content. The stuff ranged from plainly injudicious to completely innocuous; regardless, it was brought to the attention of people with great institutional power and senses of humor atrophied by the strenuous effort to protect their organizations' hindquarters.

However I'm much more spooked by tales of profs who have endured similar circumstances (cf. the Phantom Professor and her lightly fictionalized follies at SMU). They discovered that, even anonymized, it's too easy to identify students, colleagues, administrators, and schools--and thereby open themselves and their employers to legal action.

In one of my first blog entries I mentioned an adjunct gig in the most off-hand yet complimentary way. My wife, ever vigilant, scolded me for opening myself to a Doocing. I still maintain there was no defensible way even a malicious prick could misconstrue the post (or link it to me, for that matter). But the fact that I need to be careful to that degree with what I write - anonymously - dismays me considerably.

So am I to just roll over and accept that anything with potential blowback is off limits? There goes much of our 1st Amendment freedoms as well as entertainment value. As hard as it is to resist passing along these infuriating, titillating, laughter-inducing anecdotes, I can't decide which is a greater loss.

I guess I'll just stick to safer territory: insinuating that minor public television figures are gay.