I think this situation is different for two reasons:

1) The job these two were hired for is the same as the cited writings. It is not unrelated to their new job, it is precisely their new job, political online writing. To say one can't examine that record is the same as saying you can't look at any of my previous code libraries when you hire me as a programmer.

2) People do change, and had these two come out with "yes, we wrote very inflammatory and intemperate things, but we're older and wiser now", I doubt there would have been nearly as much traction. But they didn't — they tried airbrushing and transparently false excuses ("satire").

That said, I find it bizarre that people still don't realize that public writing is, well, public. I first started participating in online communities back in 1974 or so, and even then I was careful to avoid writing anything I wasn't willing to take public responsiblity for.

I remember one friend of the family who kept getting "outed" by online discussion groups as "a waste of taxpayer money." He worked for a state college.

The kicker is that he worked as a computer programmer, and would get on Usenet while the programs were compiling. So he wasn't wasting time on the taxpayer's dime at all; he was just annoying people while using obstreperous language, usually maligning their illiteracy and inability to carry an argument. But THIS MEANT WAR and so they'd do his best to harass him— sometimes physically, which is why he used a pseudonym in the first place.

And the topic under discussion? Science fiction. He'd sometimes get death threats over what he posted. So much fuss over so little...

Well, having said all that, Vanderleun, you still have to admit that Iowahawk's parodies of the Edbotte is healthfully cathartic.

You have it exactly. Iowahawk is one of the great living treasures of America.

What would really be bad, is if they, meaning the all-pervasive, somewhat meaningless, but all-powerful THEY...start removing posts and videos from the internet which poke fun at current sacred cows and prophets...then a black car with tinted black windows and a government license plate shows up at your house at 3 o'dark, and without a warrant hauls you off to be questioned, while your existence is erased from the public record...that would suck.