In today's blogosphere blow up, we have Rogers Cadenhead, Dave Winer - and a bunch of reactions - ranging all over the map. The one that kind of made me think was Scoble's post, and some of the comments in it. It's not the actual controversy that caught my attention though - rather, it's the reaction to it. Let me pull a comment from Nick Bradbury's post - the idea was expressed to some extent by by a lot of people, and by a number of commenters (on various blogs:

These public fights and taking-sides thing is starting to creep me out...

Here's the thing: Life is about taking sides, so buckle up and get used to it. If you have kids, do you maintain a constant state of non-judegementalism? If so, please warn me now, so that I never end up in the same room with them. When you see something wrong, you can criticize it, in the hopes of improving things - or, like all too many people, stay silent and offer tacit support for the bad behavior. Why is Winer such a consistent jerk? Because he has enablers all over the web, ready to step in and say "but really, he's not so bad...". That's what Scoble's post is doing - offering tacit support for Dave's consistent - and continuing - bad behavior.

Non-judgementalism isn't some kind of higher plane of existence - it's acceptance of all things, good or bad. The only thing that gets you is more bad, piled high, with an extra topping of obnoxiousness thrown in. We've all seen children acting out, and wondered to ourselves "what's wrong with the parents? Can't they control that child?" Well, we have the same thing here in the blogosphere. Too many people have bowed down and worshipped at the house of Dave for too long, and he acts just as you would expect: badly.