A miniscule portion of the people who read that story chose to take advantage of the anonymous, open forum nature of comments in our news section to express regret that the Vice President hadn’t been killed in the attack.
Well, if Malkin’s got the shots, we can analyze just how miniscule that portion was.
As soon as these offensive comments came to our attention, they were deleted from the site. But that didn’t stop the right-wing hit machine from seizing on the anonymous comments in an effort to prove that “Democrats and liberals” (as Rush, able to divine party affiliation and political philosophy from a username, quickly labeled the commenters) “have a hatred and a disgust for Cheney…that cannot be explained.”
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.
All of whom are banned, I am sure. And how anonymous were these comments, exactly? Shall we take the names and do a little research to find out how unrepresentative they were? Thanks for scrubbing the comments, though. All unrepresentative 400 of them, or whatever.
Besides being an utter and total crock, this is also the height of intellectual laziness. As Glenn Greenwald put it in his brilliant analysis: “Stray, anonymous comments prove nothing. And those who rely on them to make an argument—especially without bothering to make any effort to prove that they are reflective of anything—should be presumed to have no argument at all. That is why they are relying upon such transparently flimsy and misleading methods to make a point.”
Holy crap. Arianna’s got to read Patterico on this issue, who paddled GG so hard it made his teeth bleed. Besides, Greenwald goes out of his way whenever he can to blow anything up into a generalized indictment of what Marcotte likes to call the right-wing smear machine.
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.
Well, just restore the thread, and well find out how widespread it was, eh?
She then cites Rush Limbaugh making a stupid comment.
Exclusively on the left? He can’t be serious. There are endless examples to disprove this, including the comments that appeared on Little Green Footballs (a site Rush has glowingly praised) after a UN outpost in Lebanon was blown up by an errant Israeli missile: “Too bad Kofi wasn’t there too,” “I’d be laughing my ass off if somebody launched one right in Kofi’s office while he was groping his secretary,” “4 less UN terrorist collaborators. Good Job IDF,” “Maybe a couple more UN observation posts getting blown to hell would be appropriate.”
Does this prove “the fury, bile and idiocy of the sub-moronic
leftright”? Of course not. But it does prove how wrong Rush was. And how phony was his outrage.
I urge you, Arianna, to read the way Greenwald typically portrays the right before you yourself get on your high horse.
But to stress a point made in comments today by Steve, I find it remarkable that GG can find it so horrible that Glenn Reynold’s might broach the hypothetical assassination of mad mullahs, whereas this . . . this wishful thinking regarding terrorists blowing up the Vice President is just not representative of us. Oh, no. Our standards of mental hygiene are MUCH higher than theirs.
Lady, nobody does high dudgeon like GG. Only I think he may be sincerely hysterical. Unfortunately, that still doesn’t make him honest, either.
****
update: I emailed Charles to let him know what Zsa Zsa was up to, but it turns out he was one step ahead of me… [-JG]
Does Arianna not know that the hirelings she has running her site moderate comments—and that her site is essentially a member’s only club for “progressives”?
But once again, Greenwald is playing his cards right. Maybe Arianna will buy him a nice watch or something. Mona? She gets to join them for lunch, though she has to eat grilled cheese sandwiches with the servants.
Maybe somebody who has an account over there will post links to Patterico’s piece…
It would be better if we could get the first 400 comments and inspect hanging chads. But you’ve got a point, Jeff: what does anonymous mean when people have to register at the site?
BTW, what was that threat thing Patterico was talking about today?
Dan,
While her writing style would lead you to beleive that Rush made some sort of stupid comment; Arianna was merely talking about comments left on LGF. In fact, if you follow the link to Limbaugh’s comments about LGF, he didn’t even “glowingly praise” the blog, but merely pointed to some FACTS (in this cause photos) that LGF exposed about coverage of a protest… and if you follow the links to the “LGF Watch” site most of the 18 listed comments of what was at least 100 comments, weren’t really as bad as the 3 comments she quoted.
Does Arrianna think we can’t follow links??
How exactly does she reach the following conclusions:
They were made by anonymous visitors to the site—visitors that make up a very, very small unrepresentative portion of our readers.
Readers are anonymous. Most readers choose not to comment. I agree with her on that point in her post. How does she make the leap that the ones who chose to comment anonymously on the Cheney story were unrepresentative? Does she know who they are or is she just spitballing here? They sure sounded like typical whacked out moonbat haters to me. Someone ought to tell Arianna that the commenters were her target audience and the story hit paydirt.
The link didn’t work.
Is this about Greenwald’s article asking why the bomb Iran crowd are afraid to say it in public?
How do you know there’s a bomb Iran crowd?
Well, we know there’s the Beach Boys at least.
On the plus side, Greenwald seems to have discovered the paragraph. I may have to start reading him now.
She’s probably just assuming that, unlike her, the rest of us can’t afford to hire a small army of cabana boys to follow the links for us.
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How to make an unsubstantiated accusation, back down when you are called, and pretend it never happened.
alfi is a master of concision, if of nothing else.
furris,
I’ll attribute the fact that you are unaware of the Beach Boy’s call to Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran to the fact that you’re British.
Are there other Americans crazy enough to want to attack yet another country based on faulty intelligence, I can only hope not.
On the plus side, a few thousand sailors get to get away from some miserable Seattle weather for a few months.
1. The Beach Boys didn’t sing that.
2. It doesn’t change furriskey’s spot on analysis of your game.
Jeff, Arianna doesn’t let you post links, and for that matter, though I’ve got an account my comments usually don’t penetrate the shields.
Dang. And here I was hoping there were some sort of backmasking messages about the Islamic Republic on ”Pet Sounds.” Oh well.
Fuck. Caught out on a matter of Californian pronunciation by alfi. In my defence I would say that only bats can hear the lyrics of a Beach Boyys’ track, and I have gone through life thinking they were talking about the Silver Fox.
(BTW, well done figuring out that I wasn’t an Afghan)
Say, Al Phee, you do know that Coolio didn’t do “Amish Paradise” nor did José Feliciano do “Police Stop My Car”, don’t you?
I think omega-boy just tried to make a joke. Sure, it kinda fell flat, but at least he made the effort.
I give it a C+
Yeah, but he made the effort trying to dodge having been called out on yet another turdlet dropped on the rug. As noted:
He gets an F from me.
In my defence, I’ve been drinking.
Ah, then you get an A!
tw: problems67? Of course not, Ossifer!
Back in the glory days of Usenet, they called Arianna’s premise “the lurkers support me in e-mail”. There were even song lyrics, to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” …
How To Participate In An Internet Flame War
alphie:
Why don’t you mention exactly when that song came out, alphie?
No, that’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Baritone Dwarfs, actually.
Dude, didn’t you know the Beach Boys are psychic?
Yes, alpo, bombing Bosnia and Kosovo was very, very wrong.
This is the part of Greenwald’s argument that bugs me most. For something like this, it’s really not necessary to make an argument that vile comments are representative of a blog. All one needs to do is link to the blog in question. Let readers see the comment section and judge for themselves. I saw a post about the HuffPo’s comments and followed a link to the comment thread. About half the of the scores of posts I read were either jokingly or seriously approving of the assassination attempt on Cheney. That’s all the proof needed.
Of course, given the penchant of many lefty blogs to rewrite history and remove their ugliness when it becomes a political liability, screen captures of the comments can be very valuable.
I have a pdf file of the comments on Huffpo somebody sent me.
I’ll try to get it uploaded later.
Son has the croup, so we were up all night watching him breathe. Have to take him in to the doctor’s office today, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have to post.
Anybody else out there have a hosting account and want to upload a pdf, let me know and I’ll email it to you. You can then post the link to it here.
Jeff, Michelle Malkin has it posted here.
Who are totally serious, of course. Unless they’re left wing trolls.
Oy, the croup’s a real bitch. One of the good things about living in Houston is because it’s so humid, we can just open a window and turn on a ceiling fan. That usually does the trick for my kid.
On HuffPo’s comment deletions: I wonder what, if any, comment policy they have. Do they ban people? It is of course their perogative to ban or not ban. But if they do, do people who agitate for the assassination of the vice president warrant being banned? If not, who does?
Next, doesn’t a moderator approve HuffPo’s comments before they are posted? I may be wrong on that point, but I don’t think I am. If they do have a moderator who approved these comments (and then deleted them when they became political liabilities), it’s much harder to make the case that the deleted comments aren’t in some way representative of the blog as a whole, at least as far as what is deemed acceptable discourse.
I’m not trying to score points here. I’m seriously interested
Jeff:
“Son has the croup, so we were up all night watching him breathe. Have to take him in to the doctor’s office today….”
Hope he feels better soon!
Ok, if it’s such a miniscule portion of the comments on the thread, why were they mostly deleted?
Thanks for the well wishes. And thanks for the link, Pablo. I’ll add it to the post.
JeffG
What T=Webb said re: croup. My best thoughts that your little one is well soon.
Arianna is just demonstrating, yet again, another instance of the “Progressive” double-standard. Non-leftists are responsible fore each and every comment made by any other non-leftists… Progressives are not, indeed if ANY nastiness comes from “their side” then it must be a right-wing conspiracy to make them look bad.
Being “progressive” is never having to take responsibility for anything.
Darleen: I want you to work up a Hallmark Journeys card “expressing regret” at Big Time’s survival.
Alphie said:
The day will come when the marching moron crowd is going to have to scramble to put the ‘faulty intelligence’ claim about Iraq down the memory hole. You’d think that for one, you’d be slow to show your ignorance about how intelligence works. More importantly, the statement that the US’ issues with Iran could be remotely attributed to faulty intelligence is so blatantly absurd given the evidence in hand that you’re embarrassing yourself.
There’s talking points that serve to buttress a position and there’s those that make the same position laughable. Failing to recognize the distinction in use is usually the mark of someone with no understanding of the talking point he’s using and applies it to every event that shares some particular. It’s also the trademark of someone who tends to conflate a unrelated (and in this case probably ‘faulty’
talking point into a position thinking that as an assumed truth it will somehow give weight to that position. This is a classic logical fallacy. Look it up.
Turns out the HuffPo does have a comment policy. It appears that those who wished the VP dead were either “trusted, regular commenters,” or their comments were approved by a moderator. And they do ban people for repeated violations. Here’s the link. And here are the key graphs.
This doesn’t speak well for the HuffPo. Or for Arianna–she’s either being disingenuous or she doesn’t know what’s going on under her own banner.
Dan
Sounds good…I’ll get on.
Pablo,
That link has been up and down and hard to get to for several days. It could be just due to the numbers of people trying to download or view it online, or it could be a concerted effort to prevent it’s dissemination by tying up the bandwidth with repeated read requests (a suggested counter to what it reveals that I ran across on some site). Either way, the more places it can be viewed and referenced, the better.
I had to go to the ER with offspring #2 when he had croup. They gave him a shot (of steroids, I think) and that kid was bouncing off the walls.
T/W: It made him feel78 a lot better.
Clarification:
“(a suggested counter to what it reveals that I ran across on some site)”
The referenced mode on information suppression was suggested by some mook somewhere and concerned info unflattering to Lamont’s campaign back in the fall (may have even been the black face contretemps but I don’t recall exactly). Don’t mean to imply that I know it’s been suggested in this particular case, only that it’s a practice that has some currency.
We (wife & I; not the royal We) had to take our one-and-so-far-only child to the ER as well. The croup is pretty scarry, especially the first time and especially at 2 a.m., when you’re in a bit of haze.
Hope your little one feels better soon, Jeff.
TW: pay84. Yep, that’s about how much it cost per x-ray
Sounds about right.
All this talk about “unrepresentative” comments reminds me of something from a few years back. My small daughter was miffed at me, and was refusing to go to the bathroom, even though she needed to. I finally got her on the potty and she did her business. She said, ”I didn’t pee; my PEE-PEE peed!” Not representative, you see…
Daddies, don’t let your toddlers grow up to be croupiers…
Alphie,
What about the information that you have available leads you to believe that the information about Iran is based on “faulty intelligence”?
BRD
Dan
You’ll find a new Proggmark Journeys’ card in your email.
Publishing a Thanksgiving Prayer wishing for Cheney to die? —Totally cool with the HuffPo management.
Accusing HuffPo commenters of supporting assassination attempts on Cheney and expressing genuine disappointment when they fail?—Inconceivable!
Alphie, you ignorant slot!
Could you name me the “bomb Iran” crowd, as opposed to those who refuse to take that option off of the table?
Or maybe we should just say: “Insuh Allah” when Israel is finally wiped off the map.I mean, what’s the problem here? It’s only a bunch of Joooos, right?
Better send your brown shirts to the cleaners before Hillary gets elected. You wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a person with any intelligence. They are the first ones to go.
Questions are just so annoying to Marxists.
For Alphie
I think we should bomb Iran. ABout 10 military targets.
See, I admitted it. Unfortunately, I don’t make policy in this country so I suspect we’ll spend most of our time talking to the Iranians while they make an Islamic bomb in the background.
Your talking idea sounds much smarter and safer.
Could someone let Arianna know that Kofi Annan is not nearly as important to this country as the Vice .President, no matter who it is. There’s no loyalty to one’s country anymore apparently.
April the 5th, 1965, Patrick.
Pablo, perhaps this is what al-Falphie hears:
.
Sowing, of course.