Ken Arromdee wrote:
Anyone searching for ["kerry swift boat"] is specifically searching for the controversy, not just searching for Kerry.
"Kerry" has common meanings unrelated to John Kerry on any level (and no common meanings along the lines of the sexual connotation arbitrarily assigned to "santorum"). All of this is beyond our control.
If the santorum article only showed up when searching for "santorum sexual slang" there wouldn't be any problem.
I've seen no evidence that there *is* a problem (of our creation).
[T]he Wikipedia article is better than another page that's even worse.
Talk about damning with faint praise. He might prefer the Wikipedia article over the other one, because even if it harms him, it doesn't harm him as much as the other one. Trying merely to be less harmful than other web pages is an abominably low standard. We can do better than that.
How does the Wikipedia article harm him? The webpages created out of malice will continue to exist (and appear in Google search results) regardless of our actions. The existence of an article documenting the matter in a neutral, dispassionate manner (and making clear that the association stems from an organized campaign against Rick Santorum) actually benefits him.
"Person X is like shit" is unpleasant in a very different way from "person X is a liar". The latter creates an unpleasant association with that person only to the degree that that person is believed to have committed unpleasant activities. The former creates an unpleasant association on an emotional level.
As Rob noted, the claims regarding Obama's birthplace have resonated on an emotional level to a huge extent. And I would argue that the potential damage was far greater, given their widespread perception as literal truths. (People might draw an unpleasant association between Rick Santorum and the concept described via the neologism, but no one has been led to believe that he literally *is* "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.")
You can write a balanced article that reports the claim that Obama is a liar without making the audience think Obama is a liar. You cannot do this when the article is about comparing a person to shit.
I see no material distinction preventing us from documenting the matter in a balanced fashion.