Saturday, May 27, 2006

Always good to remind ourselves

Huffpost ran the Gonzales-threatened-to-quit story as a banner on its homepage. I mention this only to give you the current tenor of its readership. This response could stand for many (I've inserted the hyphens):

Send the f------ lapdog Mexican Gonzo back to Mexico...he is a freaking wetback trying to use Mexican tactics in America...he should be relieved of his commission.

Ordinarily, you wouldn't hold a blogsite responsible for its correspondence. But consider:

1. Huffpost can afford a staff to review and eliminate inappropriate comments.

2. This comes first on its "Comments Policy" page:

We never censor comments based on political or ideological of view. We only delete those comments that are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language, or include ad hominem attacks. We pre-moderate comments on our blog posts and post-moderate comments on news stories.

Abusive, off-topic, foul language, ad hominem: I would submit that the above comment hit for the cycle.

3. The above comment was elevated to "Readers' Favorite" status, meaning that lucky Hufftoasters may read it in larger-print type above the rest of the other 497 weigh-ins.

Just one question: what sort of comments do they disallow? Besides mine, of course.

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