Runitout said:Where a public figure parades their family, and then further uses another's family as a way to attack them? Well, in those circumstances, I would blame the public figure for inviting scrutiny on them by those they choose to attack in that fashion.
In this example, as presented, the initiater is certainly the one to blame for "the situation". For the parading to further an image, and for attacking someone else's family, or trying to get through to someone via their family. They can even be scrutinized for both actions in this forum too. People have been, and will be, and that has never been an issue. Scrutinizing them is not the problem.
Nor what we are talking about.
What you cannot do however, is use the public figure's misconduct as an excuse to do them what was done to you, and ridicule, expose, speculate, threaten, or even discuss their kids and the lives of those kids, and their mental state, and what they get up to, etc.
As you do it by hurling stuff at innocent by standers at this, to get through to the culprit. You involve yet another party who had nothing to do with it.
And that is all I have said, that discussing their kids, who they are, what they do, what they look like, or speculating how they might or might not feel about their dad, how they are affected, etc, what mental scars or burdens they must have inflicted, or not, is off limits.
Talking about the principle, and scrutinizing the private realm of a public (cycling) figure, when they trade and capitalize on their private life by raising it for effect (this bit matters), fair game. Always has been. Always will be.
I guess some people are saying that we still won't allow scrutiny of Public Person C here, then. You are misreading, in that case. If C does something to B to get to A, that is wide open here.
But giving permission to Person A (or E) to involve Innocent Bystander D, because D matters to Culprit C, who took aim at Innocent Bystander B, to get to you, Person A, makes no sense to me on any level.
Which is what we have been saying all along. The kid's lives are off limits. The kids are. Not the parent's action or hypocrisy.
No matter what you beef is with C, or how personal it is, D is no legit target, and didn't become one, simply because they happened to be around C, or born into the family. They are not doing anything. C is the target, and remains the sole target. Even more so.
No matter how much you want to make person C feel how it felt to you (or others), you would do it over the back of someone who is not involved in the action, and who should be able to get on with their lives in peace, and in private.
All the more if the outrage is about having people involved who shouldn't have been.
Involving others the same way, to prove that point, is nonsensical, and indefensible from the innocents point of view. The only point of view that really matters, and why we take that position, that discussing anyone who didn't step into the public light, and is involved in a realm usually seen as private, is off limits. None of your business. And we are even stricter about that when it involves minors, as they are deemed/seen to be unable to stand up for themselves, and legally deemed to be incapable to make up their own minds or realize the full consequences, even if they did play a more active role.
For clarity: I have never seen RR making Lance's kids a target, for instance, so we are talking hypothetical here, after people speculating about "if he did that", not as a result of something that RR actually did.