So Red the Rose

udging by some of the links to pop up on my Internet the past hour or so, this fake Mitt Romney thing is starting to be about Pinterest changing the name of my parody account, and not about the fact that the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President asked them to dilute criticism about him. This was never my intention.

Pinterest is a site suddenly hitting the mainstream in a big way and I’m sure they have plenty to deal with, without some asshole like me using their platform in a way that isn’t exactly what they had in mind for it. I have a lot of admiration for what their team has achieved and I am sorry if I have at all distracted them from their pursuit.

The issue that offends me about this whole thing, the reason I wanted to call attention to it, is that Mitt Romney wants to become president of a country that cherishes the right to make fun of its leaders. It seems clear that his team could not handle a little bit of skewering by a social media account that, at the time, had only 47 followers, and it’s pretty awful that they’d ask Pinterest to “fix it.” This far, far outweighs, in my mind, the fact that Pinterest acceded to his request.

Let’s be clear — as a matter of law my Free Speech rights were not violated. Pinterest has every right to do what they did, and Mitt Romney has every right to ask them to. However, it’s a little sketchy that the Romney campaign would actually ask. It’s disrespectful to the spirit of free expression, and it reveals something about his character. That’s all I wanted to say about it. 

I’m sorry if I caused anyone at Pinterest any problems.

(Source: spiegelman)