A need for understanding

Dan Gillmor weighs in with sound advice on the topic of online indiscretions coming back to haunt us:

The fact is that everyone has done or at least said something that is embarrassing. Who among us hasn't made an idle comment that we've come to deeply regret in retrospect, a comment that if blared to the world could be ruinous if not treated as the idle and foolish, and therefore forgivable, remark that it was?

I've said before, and repeat: We'd better start cutting each other some slack. People deserve some privacy, for starters, but they also deserve to be given leeway for what they've said when they were young, or in forums that have nothing to do with their employment.

The alternative is that we will hire and elect drones: people who were dull before and will be dull forever. I'm more interested in people who may sometimes go too far but who are at least taking risks, exploring what it means to expand their horizons.