Politico: Candidates Can't Control Their Web Sites
Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 4:28:50 pm PDT
Ben Smith quotes one of the left’s most rabid haters and his ludicrous counterattack: Ben Smith’s Blog: Speaking of candidate sites... - Politico.com.
Aravosis finds, on McCain’s site, some anti-Semitism as well, along with a long discussion of whether Obama is the anti-Christ, put to rest by the reminder that he can’t be, because the anti-Christ will be a Jew.
Also, some slurs that don’t bear reprinting.
Which, as on the Obama site, probably have more to do with overwhelmed moderators than much else. (The grossest slur is in a post that also attacks McCain.)
The raised level of press and public sophistication on this is striking: I think at this point, most people are willing to accept that both candidates can’t control everything that happens on their sites, a source of major confusion in 2004, when MoveOn was accused of using Nazi comparisons because a user of the site did.
This is absolute nonsense. Two points:
1) The candidates definitely can control what happens on their blogs. This is an extremely lame excuse. All it takes is a few motivated moderators; and it’s not like Barack Obama doesn’t have the money to pay for it. If they can’t even control a web site, how are we supposed to believe they’ll be able to handle the most powerful job in the world? And yes, the McCain camp should do a better job of it too... however...
2) It’s completely, 100% wrong to equate comments from anonymous people at the John McCain blog to registered, approved blog posts at the Obama site. This is the difference between commenters and bloggers, and again we see the attempted blurring of the line — in this case to excuse the hateful content at the Barack Obama site. Normally, leftists try to blur this line to smear center-right blog owners; they’ve been using this tactic against me for years. It shows that they’re willing and able to switch their line of attack around 180 degrees, depending on who they’re smearing or who they’re trying to defend.
UPDATE at 6/9/08 4:46:44 pm:
Yesterday, this same creep Aravosis attacked John McCain for his disability pension: Why is McCain getting $58,000 a year in disability income?
This ugly, low attack was posted by a blogger, not a commenter. See the difference?
UPDATE at 6/9/08 6:04:10 pm:
I retract the statement that blogs are approved at the Obama site; they’re not. I was told by several readers that they were, but this turns out not to be the case. (I stand by everything else I wrote.)
However, every blog post and every comment at the Obama site includes a ‘report for objectionable content’ button. What does it say about that community that either: 1) no one reported any of the dozens of incredibly offensive posts we’ve been highlighting, or 2) they were reported, but the administrators did nothing?
