I’m one of those guys who really appreciates folks who shoot from the hip and share what they feel, especially in the face of lots of heat. That’s one of the reasons why I follow many of the writers I do on the Web, including Michael Arrington and his blog CrunchNotes.

But his latest post just won’t go away. It’s been sitting as his latest now for over a week and the longer it sits there, without correction, the further it spreads mis-information.

What is that mis-information? Well it’s one thing to dislike Shelley Powers and to back it up with facts, and even feelings.

It’s another thing to spread a falsehood, which is what the post in question does. Shelley Powers, unequivocally, will criticize anyone, regardless of sex or station. She really puts her self on the line by speaking truth to power day in and day out.

Questioning dogma is a lonely place to be sometimes.

How this happened is a mystery really.

There was an argument that erupted over the use of an image in an online video, produced by a band.

You can read about the controversy at Wired.

There was some interesting discussion about copyright, much that resembling that which followed other similar controversies in the past.

Conversation that is again springing up about Fox helping itself to someone’s Flickr pictures.

I simply feel that without a lawsuit, contrary to the opinions of folks I respect – because of lack of clarity – no one knows who was in the right and who was in the wrong.

During arguments like this, where facts are few and opinions are many, where clarity is hard to find, I tend to absorb all view points, to weigh my own opinion. This was a great opportunity for that.

That is, until it ran off the rails at at Mathew Ingrams’s blog. Normally a place, like Shelley’s, for some of the best discussion about social media and the Web.

Rogers Cadenhead said that Shelley is due an apology – I agree.

Jeneane Sessum looked at this as a bigger, cultural issue with the blogosphere:

…the larger LARGER problem for the blogosphere and twitterspehere is that a culture is developing — thanks in part to time-saving, fragment-tossing platforms like twitter, that by design silence dissenting voices — we have all become easy targets for extinction, the casualties of casual dismissal.

THAT’s what bothered me about this situation, about what Mike said to Shelley, about what Mike and others said about Lane without asking Lane anything, and STILL DOES bother me.

The “you’re just” mantra is getting way out of hand.

It is cultish and thought canceling.

The irony is that my attraction to ‘shoot from the hip’ opinions is part of the problem.

When I look around me, it seems more and more that context or historical background doesn’t matter – all that matters is the headline, the blurb, and the attention driving influence of the one sharing it.

Increasingly it seems our culture encourages ‘winning it all costs’ behavior – no matter the right and wrong.

And I guess, at Christmas time especially, these things make me sad.