Posted on 07/30/2008 8:54:19 PM PDT by kristinn
The Washington Post published a smart, thorough takedown Wednesday of the baseless charge that Barack Obama spurned a visit with wounded troops because he couldn't turn the trip into a public relations coup.
SNIP
After reading the Post story online, I ventured to the adjoining public comment board to see how the public was receiving news about the bogus McCain attack. I shouldn't have bothered.
By mid-afternoon Wednesday, the washingtonpost.com forum had been flooded with nearly 1,400 messages. A few ventured toward rational discussion of Obama and his overseas travels, but the forum also overflowed with ignorance, profanity, impertinence and racism.
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The problem with Internet discussions at many websites, including latimes.com, is that participants are not required to identify themselves. Many use the veil of anonymity to spew the most vile and inane remarks you can imagine.
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Online discussions appear to get particularly unruly on washingtonpost.com and other sites that monitor submissions only after they have been posted for all to see.
Elizabeth Spayd, editor of washingtonpost.com, said an electronic screen helped weed out profanity, though there are dodges around that minimal protection. A "report abuse" button beside each posting helps alert the paper's monitors, another aid in weeding out inappropriate postings, post-publication.
SNIP
The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and other news sites screen public comments prior to their appearance on the Web. But most news websites give wide berth to allow a range of opinions.
SNIP
Webmasters could begin to fix the problem and heighten the level of discussion by requiring folks who want to share their views to also agree to publication of their real names. If you're not willing to put your name beside that lovely screed, maybe it really isn't fully fit for human consumption.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Baseless?
The mainstream media has their narrative and they’re sticking to it. By the way, has anyone at Landstuhl said they got a call from Obama on Friday? He said he called.
Stop right there. Spoken like a true commie. Is this guy covering the Olympics by chance?
WaPo also had an editorial about Obama’s whining about racism, and how the dems are more racist than anyone. And the comments on that were truly disgusting - all from lib loonies.
Ping to you.
Barry himself said that didn't he?
Funny...and the Liberal slur on conservatives is that they are fascistic and more likely to curtail freedom of speech.
When we hear cries for Hate Speech legislation (An Orewellian sounding term if there ever was one) it is always the Left trying to place limits, and they ALWAYS seem to feel that it is they who will get to define what things need limiting.
That is something that should concern anyone who appreciates freedom of speech.
The solution to this problem is not forcing people to expose their real identity. The key is to make it clear that the forum demands reasonable debate, and that people who are profane and spout hate will be banned. They will not be allowed to post anymore.
> “The Washington Post published a smart, thorough takedown Wednesday of the baseless charge that Barack Obama spurned a visit with wounded troops because he couldn’t turn the trip into a public relations coup.” <
How nice. Liberal reporters defending other lunatic liberal reporters.
They are using Obama’s race as an excuse to call for censorship of critical comments about him.
I presume the screed about blaming the Pentagon is in there.
Barry is only half African-American and he's not fair game for criticism while whole African-Americans like Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele, Alan Keyes, etc. are not exempt.
I'm starting to think it's not really a race thing at all but more of an ideology thing. It seems it's okay to criticize black Conservatives but not black Liberals.
I'm just sayin'.
Whaddya know, another voice in the mainstream media demanding the names of citizens exercising their free speech rights online.”
geez, where to begin? there should have been a barf alert on that article!
This was addressed accurately tonight on hannity/colmes by Karl Rove, who was practically attacked by Kirsten Powers, saying that BHO did NOT cancel because he couldn’t use it for campaign purposes (BHO sycophants are all in denial and have selective memory as did she). Karl’s great, though - he did NOT let it go, having the facts on his side, quoting BHO’s statement at a July 26gh London news conference in front of #10 Downing Street. Citing the transcript, he read back BHO’s statement that since he couldn’t take his campaign advisor along to visit the hospitalized troops, he decided not to go. Karl’s simple answer? If he indeed really cared about going to see those troops, why didn’t he just leave the campaign advisor behind and go alone????
Duh. BHO’s disciples are protecting him to whatever lengths it takes, even lying in arguments where the truth is presented to them in black and white. I’ve never seen Karl so adamant about proving a point since he joined FNC, but he really DID tonight - I loved it. Kirsten was frustrated and PO’d :-))))))))))))))
Another genius discovers the internet and gets their feelings hurt.
Just another moron drooling over the thought of the regulation of opinion.
Get off mah tubes.
Right. With freedom of speech comes responsibility.
This will hurt the left just as bad. If anybody doubts that they can review the posts at Kos.
I don’t know - the one about celebrating the first time Dr. J dunked from the foul line was pretty funny....
The key is to make it clear that the forum demands reasonable debate, and that people who are profane and spout hate will be banned. They will not be allowed to post anymore.”
They’re all just so jealous that they don’t have any forums or boards that come close to the class and quality of this one!!
I SO lucked out that FR was my first exposure ever to message boards (also my only one since I found it:-))) - my best friend is a network administrator for a Fortune 500 company, so he’s a real tekky who’s been around boards and forums for decades and when I got him to check out FR, he couldn’t believe how unique and different it is, and was majorly impressed at how diligently it’s moderated and managed. I told him also, though, that the quality and intelligence of the members here is very high (imho) and that we do a lot of self-policing, with which he agreed.
Just sayin’ (honestly not trying to suck up:-)))
Impertinence? My, what a foppish term!
Mr. Rainey writing his column:
“Impertinent”?
Typical Liberal control freak.
‘Free Speech’ is wonderful...as long as you agree with *their* Pravda Party Line. If you don’t, they want to come and arrest you, and throw you into a “clinic” AKA: a Gulag type Mental Hospital/Prison.
I presume the screed about blaming the Pentagon is in there.”
No doubt. Amazing (and dismaying) how lies and propaganda get spread by the left while they accuse US of it. Just today, I was talking with a friend about this issue - (he reads several newspapers, so thought he knew the facts) and he said, “yeah, the Pentagon wouldn’t let him go.”
OMG, did I set him straight in a heartbeat!! But this kind of misinformation to otherwise intelligent people is rampant on a daily basis. Scary, isn’t it?
I agree.
I guess Hussein’s own words mean nothing to the WaPo.”
Only the parts that serve their own agenda. Mistake #1 of the article poster is that he/she SHOULD be reading the Washington Times (a conservative paper), not WaPo (a liberal rag).
Which race? He’s half white!
I’m starting to think it’s not really a race thing at all but more of an ideology thing. It seems it’s okay to criticize black Conservatives but not black Liberals.”
Now you’ve got it!!! AND, while we must be circumspect and PC in our words, black libs feel free to use such words as “oreos” and “Uncle Toms”.
I am sure others will try it too.
Guess he wouldn’t like all those anonymous pamphleteers who operated during the years running up to the Revolutionary War”
I fear that this has come full circle. That seems to be climate in which we live today. And the dangerous, oppressive threat of radical Islam is spreading rapidly as well, often using the same intimidation tools of political correctness that the liberals do.
Unbelievably ironic that many citizens of this country who speak out often and passionately FOR America now have to fear for their lives, those of their families, and employ bodyguards 24/7 (I could give you several names as examples).
Don’t mean to sound like I got off track, but it ties in with what you said. For the few (but increasing) number I cited above, virtually any and every citizen who speaks out on the side of right also risks being sued, drug endlessly through the courts and bled dry of all that they’re worth and have worked hard for all their lives.
The Pentagon said don’t publicize your visit in the media. A violation. He opted out.”
In my opinion, this whole “world tour, running for king of the world” was a violation, and everything about it, such as his shameful bad-mouthing of this country on foreign soil, in time of war, disrespecting our sitting President by appearing/attempting to negotiate with leaders of other countries on policy AND presuming authority with our military generals.
He’s a junior big-shot, I mean, senator who should know his place - we already have a Leader and Commander in Chief and, at least for the time being, HE AIN’T IT.
These troglodytes are meant to form the backbone of Obamas post electoral fascist movement,to enforce the historic justice against the white man and his economy, limit free speech about minorities by violence and protest ( making criticism of minorities a hate crime),and generally create a socilaits America dedicated to taxation and the redistribution of wealth to those who have been historically exploited during the past 200 years.
If Obama is elected we will eventually have our own Krystallnacht, at the hands of the very Simians that do the vile liberal posting we read about.
David Duke's blogs are sedate by comparison.
Obama is getting them all whipped up,just like he did in Kenya, the bonfires and the drums have been ignited.
The native mojo has been awakened by Obama.The jini is out of the bottle. Obama now also aspires to being an anarchist.
Do they really want to revisit the past and play Cowboys and Indians?? It seems that they do. God help them.
The WaPo blog, and many liberal lefy blogs are merely modern camp fires where the natives stir them selves up into a form of mass hysteria, for Hope & Change ( code words for increased minority government handouts)
It’s up to the sane folks to understand. The idiots have been taught the Presidency is no different than a McDonalds manager. Satan is alive and well.
Good thing they don’t believe in self-defense. They lose
Satan is alive and well.”
And one of his family is running for POTUS.
Ignorance, Mr. Rainey, is not seeing that which is front of you.
Ignorance is you posing as a writer and editor.
The typical WaPo reader? The Democrat Party?
And just for giggles, how could the WaPo debunk McCain's charge that the Obamessiah blew off a visit with wounded soldiers, because he couldn't bring his campaign staff and take pictures? Can the WaPo read Obie's mind? The Obama Campaign has put out two or is it three, four or six different explanations for their change in plans.
Now, McCain can't prove that that's the reason Lord High Obama didn't go, but it is the logical inference from the facts. And since when does the WaPo care about truth in political charges?
“The mainstream media has their narrative and they’re sticking to it.”
Did anyone see the exchange between Karl Rove and Kirsten Powers on this subject last night? Kirsten took one of the several explanations Obama gave, and said it as fact, and tried to keep on going. Rove wouldn’t let her, he insisted they talk about it, and they both got really angry.
Snopes is declaring the whole thing “false”.
[so it’s gotta be, right?]
Pfffft.
Why don’t you send him the url from THAT WaPo site and demand equal time, sorta like an online “Fairness Doctrine?”
LOL! A Liberal bemoaning internet attacks!
eyedigress, you couldn’t have been right, “Good thing they don’t believe in self-defense. They lose”
Because you know, these are the same dweebs back in elementary school that used to get picked last, “for anything” remotely athletic, always wound up getting the wedgie for being the teachers “suck up,” and always ended up playing with all the other little “weird” kids, their moms cut the crusts off their sandwiches and always had to come to school if they got a cut or scrape...does that just about sum it up.
Now, after they spent their college years getting high, not “socializing well with the opposite sex,” and hanging out with other mis-fits, they now have a forum to try and level the playing field...from behind a desk...wanna know why the printed media is dying...these people are in charge of it.
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