I’ve been a long time follower of Gawker.com’s media network. For years I’ve followed Kotaku.com for news on the game industry. I read Gizmodo every day for gadget and technology news. I find Consumerist to be a great resource when it’s come to my rights as a, well, consumer, and lately I even used Jalopnik when researching the new car I was going to buy. I’ve done some business research on Valleywag, and I’ve used and recommended Lifehacker.com to friends and family for miscellaneous odds and ends of all departments.

And now here they are, posting illegally-obtained emails from Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s personal email accounts. Private family photos. Personal email contact lists, including her husband, and other family friends. Phone numbers of her children. (who all but one are minors, by the way)

The accounts have since been taken down, and while Imageshack and 4chan – where the group who claims responsibility was formed – had them for awhile, those have since been removed as well. But Gawker, knowing that this information was obtained illegally, and knowing that this information serves zero purpose in exposing any alleged use of personal email for state business. They’ve gone ahead and posted this stuff for the sole purpose of being spiteful and hurtful, because their authors’ and/or editors’ politics don’t mesh with hers. Gawker, which has spent so long masquerading as a legitimate media group has shown itself for what it really is, little more than a garbage tabloid. Except I don’t think even the National Inquirer would run this story.

As far as I’m concerned, this is beyond low.

I may display a little partisan bias here, in noting that you never see this kind of behavior displayed on behalf of the Republican party. You never see costumed idiots rushing the stage at the Democratic speeches and conventions. You never hear about the families of Democratic officials being dragged out into the public eye, the way Governor Palin’s has this last month. (And let’s leave the Kennedys out of this, most of them are officials themselves, and Billy Carter reveled in his own infamy, as did Roger Clinton.)

But I will promise you this, reader: Had it been Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi I’d be equally angry.

I am angry because this is not the political process. It is not even the process of justice, if one believes there is justice that needs to be served to this woman. It is simply the result of blind fanaticism, taken to a foolish and idiotic extreme, all in the name of readership numbers.

I am angry at the hypocrisy in the Internet ‘elite’, who clamor for privacy in all things only to lash out and violate someone else’s.

And I am angry at Gawker, for stooping to this level. While some will say that “they’re only a bunch of blogs,” I think it is reasonable to say that blogs have long become mainstream enough media that as long as they are breaking original stories, they should be beholden to the same rules of journalistic integrity as any other media employee.

This won’t blow over anytime soon, as far as I’m concerned. I hope other people will see this issue for what it is as I do. I hope people stop patronizing their sites and providing them ad revenue. I hope people stop providing them with readers to justify their banner pricing. Their behavior is no way to run a media organization.

I would just as soon get my news coverage from Perez Hilton. At least with that dude you know what you’re getting into.