As someone preparing to go back on the market for an academic job, this blog is making me increasingly nervous.
Like my son Jonah, I am constantly in battle with myself. I love to get the laugh and the applause, but the best jokes are sometimes the riskiest. People can get offended, meaning can get twisted, and just plain stupid things can get blurted out. Also, the personal posts that I do so enjoy writing can undermine professionalism. A voice that plays well on the Internet does not necessarily translate into the real world.
I have a lot more boundaries about things I write about than I used to -- no discussion of work other than logistical matters or broad generalities about the profession as a whole and no discussion of the neighbors. Still, those boundaries may not be enough.
Bloggers that are a lot more restrained than I am have gotten spanked by the academy this year -- Dan Drezner, Sean Carroll, Jacob Levy, and now Juan Cole was turned down for a job at Yale. There's a collection of essays in the Chronicle about the Cole affair. See the CT and Drezner for the links and commentary.