An essential element to a Communist show trial is the renunciation, where the target of the political prosecution must admit the wrongness of his views and the rightness of his government.
Dave Winer has responded to Robert Scoble’s love letter to Jason Calacanis with a modest request: His friend must renounce his view that Mahalo, Facebook, and TechMeme will crush Google:
So here’s what you should do when you say something that’s incorrect. As soon as you realize it, correct it. Maybe offer an explanation, but that seems optional. But first and foremost, fix the bug.He repeats the request in an audio post:Everyone is telling him this, but he’s not getting the message. Simply say “I made a mistake” and every piece from this point on won’t have to guess what happened.
That was a real big mistake, but everybody still thinks you’re alright. OK, you’re kinda funny. Heh. And it was a crazy idea, and the drugs must have been very good, but we’ll get over it. That’s the problem, though. Nobody knows what to make of it. So they’re all guessing. You could settle it. Say you made a mistake.
Considering the fact that these two are 10-year friends, and Scoble’s in the midst of a Technorati shitstorm over his post, you have to wonder how he’s privately taking Winer’s kick in the ribs while he’s down. Publicly he’ll swallow his pride and accept it, since Scoble had his dignity surgically removed a few years ago in a live Windows Media Player streamcast that’s still available somewhere on Microsoft Channel 9. But privately, in the lizard brain that never forgets an insult, he has to know Winer would never accept the treatment he’s dishing out to him here. (The fastest way to make Winer come unglued is to tell him what to write on his blog.)
Can anyone recall a single time when Scoble publicly told Winer to renounce a mistake?