I've Got You In My Sights

Some of you may remember the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in January. If not, you can get the background story from this CNN article. Long story short, Giffords (D-AZ), was shot while speaking to her constituents outside a supermarket. She is currently recovering and undergoing therapy at the Memorial Hermann Medical Center in Houston, Texas.

An innocent meet-and-greet turns violent.

A few weeks prior to the shooting, Sarah Palin had begun a new phase of her campaign, called Take Back the 20. Palin made the mistake of using images of gun crosshairs to target the districts of Democrats who voted in favor of the recent health care legislation. Giffords' district falls under this category. A spokeswoman for Palin denies any connection between the violent imagery and the shooting, and Palin herself later denied she meant the image to look like a gun sight. Below is the offending image, in its entirety:

What happens online, stays online.

It is completely foolish to believe that Sarah Palin's staffers never considered this imagery to be violent in any way. The groundswell told Palin's staffers this with an intense backlash against the image. When you Google search "Sarah Palin crosshairs," you will find thousands of blog posts about her insensitivity and foolish behavior. Like I mentioned earlier, if you make a mistake, the groundswell will call you out on it.

In addition to the SarahPAC website, Palin used Twitter to promote the map as well, tweeting "Don't Get Demoralized! Get Organized! Take Back the 20!" with a link to the image. She also tweeted "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "'Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!'"

...But she didn't intend the map to come off as violent.

Palin's campaign could have benefited from a policy of controlled transparency, in which information is released in a controlled fashion. In addition, her staffers responded to the faux-pas in the worst way possible - by quickly removing the image from her website with no explanation. No, I'm not saying she should have kept the image live, but she should have publicly apologized for the mistake at the same time. Palin still has not apologized for her mistake, and the TakeBackthe20.com website no longer exists.

If you want more information about the shooting, watch this!

This scandal provides an important lesson - sometimes you can be too transparent. Sarah Palin showed the groundswell that she was fallible... a little too fallible. This illustrates the boundaries between radical transparency and controlled transparency, and when it is appropriate to use one method over the other. Hopefully Sarah Palin and her campaign staffers will learn from this mistake, and listen to the groundswell before jumping in.