Not to get all Constitutional, but you gotta admit: free speech is a funny thing. We seem to love the idea of it - that is, free speech - right up the point that said speech begins to offend our personal sensibilities.

And the question of whether we should codify civility on the net is all the rage right now, hence this morning's New York Times piece (which so many of you forwarded to me - thank you!).

There are many ways to slice and dice this thing, but when all is said and done, I believe the central question comes down to this: just exactly how much free speech are you/we willing to tolerate? Which, does seem like a bit of a strange question to be asking in these United States...

901am, French Frying Citizen Journalism
The Onion, The Unveiling of Apple's Unveiling of New Product Unveilings
Doc Searls, On The Suckiness of the RIAA
Andrew Lark, Blogging Authentically
New TeeVee, Whithering Widgets

Global Voices Online, Egypt Not Lovin' The Bloggers
GigaOM, You. You're Disrupting Hollywood
Scobleizer, On Mediasnacking
Editors Weblog, Blog Journalists Blog

Tech Crunch, Odds On Pop Culture
CNews, You Lonely Blogging Bastard
Yahoo News, Tag. You're It!
CIO Update (by way of Doc Searls), We're Gonna Need Us Some Bigger Tubes
901am, Australia Not So Into Olympic Bloggers

901am, Lern Too Spale, Pleez

Slate, Your Dog As A Master Manipulator

Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, Rupert's Ka-ching Machine

Blog@bilities, E, RIP

Two things I found amusing about Edelman's newly released "Corporate Guide to the Global Blogosphere" report:

1. That the report is only available in pdf and some other hard to link, non-web-searchable version. Honestly, I wanted to shoot myself reading it.

2. This quote: "We are convinced that by engaging the blogosphere in a transparent manner, companies can have their viewpoints heard."

I don't know ... visions of Walmarting Across America come to mind?!?!?!?!

I fear that, not unlike the political establishment(s) covered by the political blogosphere, much of what political bloggers do appeals only to the very tiny head of the political curve.

Question is, is there a way to appeal to the much larger tail?

It is my perception (and experience) that while the political blogosphere has succeeded in amping up the oversight function, it hasn't succeeded in actually making politics that much more meaningful and accessible to the "everyday Jane and Joe".

Talk about a meaningful turn of events.

In the summer of 2005, Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine began the now famous Dell Hell thread; where he relentlessly (tho deservingly) attacked Dell for its then abominable approach to customer service.

Cut.

A year-and-a-half later, on its Direct 2 Dell blog - Dell offered these words to their customers:

We are making efforts to be more forthcoming. We entered the blogosphere in part to take on negative issues. Will we make more mistakes along the way? Sure, but we are listening and learning as we go. In fact, the blog is all about those conversations, and it's why I'm recognizing this debate that goes on about and around us.

...Not to hire this PR firm.

I kid you not - here's their take on how bloggers should have handled the Edelman/Microsoft Vista laptop-gate:

Bloggers: Be professional and human, don’t crucify a company for deeming you worthy of free products to review and own! You might want to mention professional reviews of technology are "loaned" products like MP3 players, TV's and electronics. They don’t get to keep them... they essentially are "on a tour" following the tech press circuit, like a rock-star. Honestly, if you’re a Blogger and you get to keep a product like that, the human thing to do is say thank you.

WSJ, Opinion Journal: On Blogging Fools & Imbeciles

E-Media Tidbits: Asian Connectivity: Earthquake Shaken, But Not Stirred

Lost Remote: Newspaper Companies: 50% Off

MicroPersuasion: All The Rage: NOT Pageviews