Tuesday, July 18, 2006

RAISING THE TONE OF OUR DISCOURSE. More dudgeon at Nat Rev about out-of-control lefty blog-commenters. Someone brings up Free Republic; John Podhoretz actually takes the point for a couple of seconds; scientists watch in breathless anticipation, hoping for a chain reaction of common sense; alas, outside forces put a quick end to it:
UPDATE: Gerry Daly of RedState e-mails that I'm being unfair to Free Republic, which does moderate and delete inappropriate material. Its guidelines include : "Free Republic reserves the right to remove any postings that are considered inappropriate. Examples of inappropriate posts are those that are off-subject or contain advertising, pornography, obscene material, racist material, bigotry, Nazi (or other hate group) material, materials promoting violence, threats or illegal acts, etc." Couldn't find anything comparable at tpmcafe or DailyKos.
Nor will Podhoretz find anything like this -- from a July 17 Oprah Winfrey thread at Free Republic which took me three seconds to locate -- at tpm:
Oprah has the right body type for being a 'fag hag'. Most of them I've known are usually obese straight gals who have low self-esteem.
This is only a present example, of course. Assuming he's not just playing dumb, Podhoretz could learn a lot about Free Republic by following it for a few days, or even just for a couple of Lincoln's Birthdays, when the Freepers really let their hair down ("Happy Birthday to the American Hitler known as Abe Lincoln"). It's always enlightening to read them on the topics of the day; as a fellow citizen, Podhoretz might be interested in Freeper attitudes about New Yorkers and 9/11 ("The liberal parasites of New York are not capable of recognition of bravery, of sacrife....the liberal trash of your state is only concerned WITH SELF, encouraged on by their witch of a so-called Senator..."), etc.

Freepers are for the most part more hilarious than offensive (except to the extent that they offend logic), but equally hilarious is the claim that a worn-out and often disregarded sheet of dos-and-donts stuck on the door makes Free Republic a cleaner establishment than Kos'.

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