Faux fury, indeed

Here's what happens: Some anonymous Huffington Post commentators post that they wish Darth Cheney had been offed in that nasty little bombing the other day. HuffPo deletes the comments. The wingnutosphere still flies into a frenzy of rage, trotting out those old "left-is-unhinged" talking points--even HuffPo's actions seem to suggst that the left really ain't that unhinged. (When LGF or Freeperland starts deleting similar crap, then I'll take their hissy fit seriously.) Until then, Arianna herself puts the wingnutosphere squarely in its place. Responses like this make me forget any mixed feelings I have about the woman. THIS is how you talk to a wingnut (if you must):

Before I get into how ludicrous this claim is, let me be absolutely clear: No one at HuffPost is defending these comments -- they are unacceptable and were treated as such by being removed. They were not made by me, by our editors, or by our bloggers. They were made by anonymous visitors to the site -- visitors that make up a very, very small unrepresentative portion of our readers.

Trying to balance the freedom and openness of the Internet with the desire to be responsible and avoid these kinds of outrageous comments can sometimes be challenging. But the fact remains: only a fraction of Huffington Post readers comment on news stories, and only a tiny fraction of those responded to the Cheney story in such an offensive manner.

***

This tactic of digging through open comment threads to find outrageous comments that can then be cited as evidence of "the angry left" has become a favorite of the swiftboat set. So much so that Kevin Drum has created Kevin's Law in reaction to it: "If you're forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you've pretty much made exactly the opposite point... If the best evidence of wackjobism you can find is a few anonymous nutballs commenting on a blog, then the particular brand of wackjobism you're complaining about must not be very widespread after all." [via Greenwald]

***

So, please, spare us the bogus indignation. And stop trying to build an illogical but politically-convenient thesis on the backs of a few unhinged and clearly fringe commenters.

The faux fury routine is getting very, very old.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tell us something we don't already know

The MTA is clueless. Man, if you need a place to vent or learn the full story behind mass transit horror stories, check out Gothamist. The MTA admitted that the service was not acceptable on many accounts, from the flooding to the fact that the MTA's website was overwhelmed. Then there's also the fact that the MTA was urging people not to take the subways and opt for a bus instead, only for buses to be (A) few and far between and (B) crowded as anything. They forgot to mention "(C) fucking slow." Don't the people at the MTA feel really stupid when they say shit like this? MTA CEO Lee Sander said, "We really are sorry about the inconvenience that New Yorkers had to deal with. In terms of how it happened, we had three inches of rain in an hour. The system is designed to handle 1.5 inches." This isn't quite as appalling as last year's 9-day Queens blackout--you know, the one where Con Ed lied about the number of places without power--but it still in
Read more

We're the ones we've been waiting for, and all that

Via Blue Wave News , Van Jones' speech at the Campus Progress National Conference, which rang true to this cautiously optimistic liberal. More from Mr. Jones, via HuffPo: We are trying to build a pro-democracy movement in a country that, at least for eight years, was run by [inaudible] authoritarians. And it is not going to be easy. But I tell you, the most important thing I can say is... We feed the fearmongers. We feed the politics of division, by giving it so much attention and letting it fill up the space in our mind. We have to feed the hope. This country is an extraordinary -- I get choked up -- this is an incredible, beautiful country... That little idiot box off in the corner trying to depress you and make you feel like this is a horrible country and everybody believes evil things about the president... it is just not true. Cut it off, just cut it off and walk down the street and talk to real people in this country. They are sophisticated. They are wise. They don't kno
Read more