Public Service Limited

It might be possible, in the near future, to use a software program to automatically produce articles like "Teens' Bold Blogs Alarm Area Schools", which appeared in yesterday's Washington Post. Double click an icon, enter a few real-life examples and out spits yet another expose filled with panicky effusions over privacy, parental oversight, and the shocking degree to which youngsters are exploiting a hot Internet technology.

And according to formula, the story always gets it a little wrong: Today's effort in the Post focuses on Xanga and Facebook, which are social networking websites, not traditional blogs. These sites let college kids and teens share pictures, calendars, and messages to each other that consist of shmaltz, slang, and unfathomable punctuation.

Can you guess what's next? No, not some heart-wrenching crime - although that's bound to happen, sooner or later. Instead the object of concern is the inevitable abusive remarks, binge drinking tales and the outright fabrications one would reasonably expect from hormone-addled kids. They are incapable of understanding that this may one day be seen by a potential employer. Teens having trouble taking the long view - stop the presses.

But one twist was not discussed - the fate of kids who might decide to serve in government. Thanks to the Sam Alito hearings, membership in any group at any time in history - even inactive, even in undergraduate years - is enough to smear any potential public servant with the most noxious views of any passing member. When people grow up with a entirely digital history and a life lived on social networks, the practice of guilt-by-association becomes a cinch. There's always an idiot nearby in the information-sphere - and if you don't "repudiate" them at every turn, everyone is easily implicated.

Kids eventually become middle-aged people with law degrees. Some will aspire to a high level of public service. Not all of them will agree with our ideology - but we have to share the same rules. Unless we apply some nonpartisan common sense to these proceedings we have no reason to expect anyone - or their digital histories - will survive the brutal interrogation that we have made the norm.