Yesterday at the Mall of America, someone threw a couple of tomatoes at Sarah Palin; he missed and hit a cop and is now under arrest. In response, Adrian Chen of Gawker offered "Who is the Hero Who Threw Tomatoes at Sarah Palin?" (150k screengrab here, URL at [1]) in which he calls the person who threw the tomatoes an "American Hero". He then followed that with "In Defense of Throwing Tomatoes at Sarah Palin" (310k screengrab here, URL at [2]).

Posts like his aren't cute in any way: he's trying to mainstream violence against politicians and posts like that have the impact of promoting others to throw things, some of which might be worse than a tomato. It doesn't matter that he "only" wants people to throw food; he's encouraging illegal activity that might cause harm and that would lower the already-low level of debate in the U.S. Instead of trying to raise the level of debate in the U.S., Chen and Gawker are showing how little respect they have for our civic rights and responsibilities. Note that despite their recommendations, some of their borderline readers might take things a step further. Whether Gawker would be legally liable if someone takes their advice remains to be seen.

And, this illustrates yet again how many on the left and on the right just aren't smart enough to do things in a smart, civil, and effective way.

Here are steps you can take:
- on your site, link the name "Adrian Chen" (or "Nick Denton") to this post
- if you link to Gawker, drop the links, put them in bare format (as above), or at the least put nofollow tags on those links
- encourage others to do the preceding.

[1] gawker.com/5421110/
who-is-the-hero-who-threw-tomatoes-at-sarah-palin

[2] gawker.com/5421210/
in-defense-of-throwing-tomatoes-at-sarah-palin