Revenge of the Retweet
b"Today we try to figure out what happens when our future presidential candidates have thousands of Tweets and Tumblr posts and Instagrams in their online record.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0What happens, when today\\u2019s teens start running for office? When their entire internet history is there, searchable, for us to read? What if these teens Tweet something at 15 that they might regret at 45? Do we learn to accept that their opinions have changed? Or do we go through every candidate's entire social media history to find dirt on them? Does that tactic still work in the future? Or do we all just throw up our hands and admit that teens have bad opinions and that hopefully those opinions have changed?\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0To find out, I talked to a real live young person with political ambitions, Eve Zhurbinskiy a student at George Washington University. She describes her own social media strategy, and how she never Tweets without thinking about how it might come back to bite her. She also talks about going back and deleting Facebook posts and even in one case her entire Tumblr because she thought it might be used against her.\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0And that\\u2019s not paranoid, I also talk to someone who tracks that kind of thing among politicians. Josh Stewart from the Sunlight Foundation explains what Politwoops is and why they\\u2019re tracking the deleted Tweets of politicians.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0And to round things out this episode I talked to someone who\\u2019s got a lot of experience managing digital campaigns for today\\u2019s politicians. Laura Olin was one of the first hires for Obama\\u2019s 2012 digital team, and she not only ran the Obama Tumblr, but she also actually Tweeted as the President.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0Throughout the episode we discuss all kinds of questions about how we think about and forgive humans.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0In March of this year, a State Supreme Court justice from Wisconsin named Rebecca Bradley issued an apology for some columns that she wrote 24 years ago in a student newspaper. In the columns she referred to gay people as \\u201cqueers\\u201d and called people with AIDS \\u201cdegenerates who basically commit suicide through their behavior.\\u201d She also said that it would be better to get AIDS than cancer, because, quote \\u201cthose afflicted with the politically correct disease will be getting all of the funding.\\u201d And that abortion is like the Holocaust and slavery.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0Bradley says that she was, quote \\u201cfrankly embarrassed at the content and tone of what I wrote those many years ago\\u201d but she also said that when she wrote them, she was \\u201ca very young student.\\u201d Now the release of these 24 year old columns wasn\\u2019t random, the organization that found the columns unveiled them just a month before voters in Wisconsin would vote on whether or not Bradley should retain her seat on the court.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0People who wanted Bradley off the court, said that the comments in the columns were so hateful that time didn\\u2019t really matter. People who wanted Bradley to say said that she had grown and learned since then, and did not still hold those beliefs. (To be clear, there was also a contingent of people who supported Bradley because they still do hold those beliefs).\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0So, voters in Wisconsin could decide. And they decided to keep her, Bradley won her seat back. So you could interpret that as evidence that past transgressions can be forgiven, right?\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0So this brings us to one version of this future. A future in which voters learn to approach their candidates as flawed individuals, people who have made missteps, people who can change their mind. This isn\\u2019t to say that we let people off the hook for their past, but rather that we are okay with them saying \\u201cI was wrong, and here\\u2019s how I\\u2019ve changed for the better.\\u201d\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices"