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• Saturday, August 18, 2007 12:07 PM

  Tangent

  This is off-topic, but when I read Garry Owen's "Speaking of assholes, Tony Snow is resigning due to colon cancer. He's dying." comment, my first thought was, "Cold!" "Harsh", "grim", "unrelenting", and "mean-spirited" might apply, too.

  But I don't disagree with it, and I'm gratified to be able to read it here.

  I appreciate that the issue of the "civility" of Internet discourse is a major bugaboo, and this site among others has devoted much space in ruminating over it. I regard the charge of "incivility" as equivalent to being labelled "subversive" during the McCarthy Era-- which we never really left behind, but that's another story. Respectable patrons of Internet sites, from popular individual sites to commercial sites like Salon, become reflexively defensive and apologetic when accused of promoting or tolerating "incivility".

  I have mixed feelings about The Huffington Post, with its aggressive trash-tabloid presentation; I think better of "Common Dreams", which some months ago added comments capability to their material. I'm confident that Garry's comment would've been censored by both sites. HuffPo, in particular, would pre-empt the possibility by simply "closing comments" when publishing the story.

  There is a disclaimer, or a warning, about an inch below where I'm typing that puts commenters on notice that Salon reserves the right to censor comments. It recites the usual reasons for deletion: we may remove letters that are far off-topic or excessively rude, or that violate the law or common decency.

  If I'm correct to think that Garry's "not-nice" comment will be permitted to remain, Salon's censors are to be commended-- at least they're being thoughtful and exercising restraint. One of the worst aspects of this on-line censorship, especially as practiced at HuffPo and now Common Dreams, is that the sites are typically disingenuous in the manner in which they practice censorship.

  HuffPo prefers not to call it "censorship", because of its pejorative connotation. (How can you have a "liberal" or "progressive" site that welcomes comments but censors them?) And Common Dreams is worse; I've never had any comments censored, but I gather from reading vestiges of replies that offensive comments are silently removed without even a "comment deleted" stub to at least mark the deletion.

  There's a creepy, old-Soviet approach to simply "disappearing" comments without acknowledgment or explanation; it's like waiting until your puppy is momentarily distracted and hiding its toy ball because you're sick of playing with it. Furthermore, these sites also disappear comments that call attention to the censorship! (BTW, the final irony is that for all of their concern, all manner of profane and abusive comments by wingnut trolls somehow persist at HuffPo.)

  In case anyone is wondering why I'm venting about those other sites: it's because of the chilling effect resulting from the presence of the Invisible Censor; they've neatly arranged it so that they can cut off troublesome dissent about their censorship policy-- so I don't see the point in wasting time risking it. Um, isn't this top-down unilateral authoritarianism the kind of problem we're commenting about in the first place? I've asked them, in vain, to at least offer an ombudsman or space to discuss concerns or complaints about censorship; not surprisingly, I've never gotten a response.

  Regardless of the general rules posted on sites, the devil's certainly in the details when it comes to deciding what is unacceptably "rude" or "indecent". Passionate comments about important issues will surely elicit intemperate or impolite expressions. I'm glad whichever Mrs. Grundy is on duty here recognizes that comments like Garry's deserve respect.

  —Little Brother Read Little Brother's other letters
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