Listen Very Carefully I Will Say This Only Once

People don't like your opinion. No really it's true. There are scads of people, hordes even, who dislike your opinions. Some may even find ways of voicing displeasure with your opinions, thereby expressing their own opinions. I would hope they follow the general rules of civility when doing so, although from what I've seen of the blog world this is not always the case, but people are free to express their disapproval of your opinions. And now for the really earth shattering news: advertisers are people too. If you are a blogger blessed with advertisers, and an advertiser doesn't like what you say, that advertiser has a perfect right to withdraw advertising from your site.
This public service announcement is prompted by a a story out of Maryland. To sum it up a blogger put up what many considered an offensive reference to the Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, a senatorial candiadte for the Sarbanes seat. An advertiser on the site, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine, was one of the people who found it offensive, so offensive that he withdrew his ad and thus his financial support from the site. The article in the Washington Post covers the incident and then sussed out this fascinating take on this action from other bloggers:

Other liberal bloggers defended Gilliard and took after Kaine for pulling his ad. Markos Moulitsas, editor of the blog Daily Kos, said that advertisers should expect edgy content and that Kaine's actions could threaten their editorial independence.

"I don't want bloggers to be afraid to say things because they don't want to offend an advertisers," Moulitsas said.

Oh puh-lese. No one is obligated to support you. If you modify your opinion so an advertiser stays, this is not the fault of the advertiser, but of your money loving heart. You can cook with gas, but if your advertisers can't stand the heat, they have the right to get the hell out of the kitchen. The decision to stick with gas or switch to electric is entirely up to you, however, and trying to place the responsibility for this decision on others sounds more like petulant whining than a bold declaration of intellectual freedom.