When this newspaper exposed EMS Lt. Timothy Dluhos for his vile tweets, we thought it couldn’t get worse. After all, here was a guy tweeting under the moniker “Bad Lieutenant” and using a photo of Adolf Hitler for his profile. But it turns out that Dluhos has friends in some pretty low places.
These friends of Dluhos have now turned their online fury on Candice M. Giove, the Post reporter who exposed him. Some fantasize about her being raped. Another talks about her being killed with a hatchet. One perverse soul wishes she would die in a car fire — “hopefully” when she’s pregnant.
Let’s put this in perspective: Dluhos is an officer in the service of New York City who was tweeting his rants for all the world to read. Though he wept when he was found out and asked reporters to leave him in peace for the sake of his children, he’s not exactly keeping quiet himself. On Wednesday, the suspended lieutenant called in to an online radio program to thank a host who then told him he was “a brave motherf—–.”
Rest assured, Candice Giove will be fine. She a tough reporter. And neither she nor The Post is about to be intimidated by lowlifes whose idea of defending Dluhos is to speculate about the grisly death of a female journalist or refer to her with vulgarities.
We can’t help wondering: How many of the people posting these things would show so much bravado if they had to sign their own names to their posts?
We all say things we regret. But we’re seeing something very different from regret from Dluhos’ defenders — something far more troubling than tasteless language.
What we are seeing is the fruit of an online universe whose offer of anonymity is helping to feed a culture of shamelessness.