Primarily because they had descended into an off-topic personal pissing match between two or three posters, but also because some of the language didn't pass the test of basic decency and civility.

Debating whether or not the word "goy" is offensive is fine, although I have to say it's a tiresome discussion and you've got to be pretty thin-skinned to get all het up about it. More broadly, Heated debate about anti-Semitism vs Jewish bigotry, or whatever other topics may come up, is clearly OK. But trolling, troll-baiting and personal insults really are not acceptable, especially when hate speech is involved. Yes, those are subjective categories. Thread-hijacks are always a tough call and we often let them go, but in this case the choice was obvious.

To veer back toward the actual topic a little, does anyone who reads Salon -- or anyone else, for that matter -- really think that if the Coens show a Jewish character in 1967 Minnesota expressing a dismissive attitude about non-Jews, the Coens themselves share or endorse that attitude? I mean, come on. Like I said in the article, it's the Coen brothers! They don't exactly depict this place & time as the Garden of Eden.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Whatever article you may be referring to, it wasn't by me.

Furthermore, while the relationship between a person's life and work is a bit too large of a subject for this forum: Presuming somebody did write a paean to Polanski as an artist after "The Pianist," what possible relevance would his arrest on a 30-year-old warrant have to that judgment?

I'm not an aficionado of his later work, and found "The Pianist" technically impressive (as always) but somewhat chilly. Which is why I didn't write anything significant, pro or con, about his Oscar. But it's worth stressing one basic fact: Person and their work, two different things.