{"id":601,"date":"2004-11-12T06:56:35","date_gmt":"2004-11-12T06:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:53","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:53","slug":"talkleft_two_emails_and_a_post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":"TalkLeft: Two Emails and a Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a simple thing that I believe blogging is about: honest argument and debate. We bloggers aren’t usually in the forefront of direct reporting, but we ought to make up for it in intellectually honest argument.<\/p>\n

Sadly, not everyone agrees with this.<\/p>\n

Jeralyn Merritt, at TalkLeft<\/a>, is a passionate advocate for progressive values through the law. I read her blog for some time. And then she proposed a silly comments policy, and I wrote her this email:<\/p>\n

Jeralyn, I noted your new comment regime before, and now see that you’ve implemented it. As I noted in my post, I find what you’re doing in targeting ‘conservative’ posters to 4 messages to be the height of false liberalism; You’re not banning people or deleting their posts because of what they do, but because of who they are.<\/p>\n

\nYou linked to Red State and suggested that your policy is the equivalent of theirs; nothing could be further from the truth. Their policy simply says “don’t be disruptive of the spirit of this place” – you could do the same, and choose not to.<\/p>\n

\nI’m going to take a break from reading you. I doubt you’ll miss me. But I’ll leave you with one thought: I really, really hope that you change this. We liberals have to find a way to have honest dialog with conservatives, if for no other reason than to convince the undecided that we won’t delete their comments if they say the wrong thing, and that a vote for us might in fact be a vote for positive change.<\/p>\n

\nTake care. <\/p>\n

Marc<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jeralyn replied:<\/p>\n

the purpose of talkleft has never been about dialogue with conservatives. It’s purpose is to stir up the choir. I have been unfailingly gracious in allowing the other side to comment at all.<\/p>\n

I’m tired of repeating myself, for those, including you apparently, who don’t want to listen. The four a day is limited to right wing troll type commenters whose purpose is to divert the discussion and obscuring the information. There are plenty of conservative commenters whose comments are not being limited. In fact, only about five have been limited and they are troublemakers, just like at red state.<\/p>\n

\nIf you want the information talkleft disseminates, then you will be the poorer for not stopping by. If you want to hear debate, there are lots of better sites to do that at.<\/p>\n

\nThanks for writing and for reading.<\/p>\n

\nJeralyn Merritt
\nTalkLeft: The Politics of Crime
\nhttp:\/\/talkleft.com<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I let it go at that point, and then tonight, I read this at Patterico<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The controversy concerns a TalkLeft post that portrayed a blogger as a victim of governmental harassment — a visit from the Secret Service — supposedly for the simple offense of being “critical” of President Bush. In a comment to TalkLeft’s post, I had the audacity to quote the blogger’s post, to show that said blogger had not simply “criticized” Bush — she had actually advocated President Bush’s assassination! Once you get past TalkLeft’s whitewash of the blogger’s ugly behavior, you can understand why the Secret Service might have gotten involved.<\/p>\n

\nHere’s where the irony gets rich. TalkLeft, having stood up for the blogger who advocated killing Bush — and having misled people as to what that blogger had actually said — edited my comment, to remove any reference to the fact that the blogger had advocated Bush’s assassination!<\/p>\n

\nThen she added a snarky update trying to make me sound like a jerk for pointing out that she had defended someone who was expressly advocating killing George Bush.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know, there’s a word for this – Orwellian.<\/p>\n

It’s both offensive to what blogging should be about – the pursuit of intellectual honesty – and stupid in the terms Jeralyn defines for herself, as “stir[ring] the choir.” It makes the choir look at itself with embarrassment, as it should. And that’s hardly stirring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TalkLeft is supposed to be about standing up for peoples’ rights. But its latest moves to restrict critical posters and alter the arguments of commenters are nothing of the kind. They’re offensive and Orwellian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}