Exposed

Shortly after John McCain picked the now infamous Sarah Palin from Alaska as his running mate, I began looking around for information about her. It was then that I first discovered The Mudflats, which I have found to be an interesting, informative and reliable resource for all things Palin. See, Change, Republican Style and Valley Girls.

Like Palin's view of Russia from her house, the Mudflats was also my window into Alaska, a distant state that I frankly knew little or nothing about before Sarah's first ya betcha. Since then, I've often checked back to see what was happening in Palinland, via Mudflats.

Even after the election, with the Palin-Be-Gone wager I had with one of my LLWL colleagues, Out of the Spotlight, I visited the site to check in on Palin news. Like me, AK Muckraker was Anonymous. I have no idea (nor is it any of my business) why. Everyone has their reasons.

As I noted several years ago, in I Hardly Knew You:

I keep an anonymous persona because many of my business relationships and clients are conservative and I certainly can't have my blog impact my work. Of course, some of my clients know that I'm liberal, but we don't often discuss politics. Also, the law is a funny business, and I don't want my political views to distract from my representation of my clients in any way. A client surely doesn't need opposing counsel to be more difficult when negotiating a transaction because they strongly object to the views of their attorney. Based upon my experience of personalities of lawyers, I'm sure that it could happen.

Of course, anyone who knows me who reads my blog could fairly easily figure out who I am. Which is why only a few close friends (and the LLWL* of course) even know that I have a blog.

Whatever her reason for anonymity, I can certain relate. For that reason, I was dismayed to learn that an Alaskan state representative (Democrat no less) had revealed the real identity of AK Muckraker. Blogger identity exposed by Alaskan Rep. Mike Doogan. And Rep. Doogan did so solely to be vindictive because she had once written a piece that was critical of him. See Famed Anonymous Anti-Palin Blogger 'Outed' by Lawmaker.

After being exposed in this way, AK Muckraker wrote an essay about the dastardly deed by Doogan, In Exposing the Identity of Mudflats, Rep. Mike Doogan Exposes Himself. Regarding her decision to remain anonymous, she says:

It said in my “About” page that I choose to remain anonymous. I didn’t tell anyone why. I might be a state employee. I might not want my children to get grief at school. I might be fleeing from an ex-partner who was abusive and would rather he not know where I am. My family might not want to talk to me anymore. I might alienate my best friend. Maybe I don’t feel like having a brick thrown through my window. My spouse might work for the Palin administration. Maybe I’d just rather people not know where I live or where I work. Or none of those things may be true. None of my readers, nor Mike Doogan had any idea what my personal circumstances might be. But that didn’t seem to matter.

The only good thing to come out of this is the outpouring of good wishes to AKM and bad PR for Doogan. In The Darkness.. Let There Be Links.. If I didn't hate the cold so much, I'd be tempted to move to his district just for the pleasure of voting against him. But, I may not have to, since he may have exposed himself and won't need any help from me.

(LLWL = Lady Lawyers Who Lunch, a/k/a my officemates)