On “Commentgate”

In an earlier post, Michael Stickings comments on comments.

He talks about some bigoted comments left on the McCain website, and while he doesn’t say this reflects on McCain, he say the website is an outlet for “straight-talking bigotry.”

Earlier in the day, there were reports of a person who left a note on the Barak Obama website that talked about how the Jewish Lobby works. The offensive comments have since been removed, but that didn’t stop Rick Moran from wondering what this said about Obama and his campaign:

But when you realize this is on Obama’s website, you really have to start wondering about not just the candidate, but people’s whose job it is to vet the site and make sure excrement like this doesn’t appear.

The fact that it is still there could mean that Obama campaign workers agree with what’s written. At the very least, it shows how incredibly tone deaf the Obama campaign is if they don’t think this is offensive.

All I can say to both bloggers is welcome to Web 2.0.

I work with websites for a living and I can say that the upside of interactive websites is that they allow the average joe to say something, to give them an audience. The downside of Web 2.0 is that it allows the average joe to say something, to give them an audience. That’s what happens when we allow people to have a say: they sometimes say some crazy things.

What’s bothersome here is that both sides try to place impossible standards to show how evil the other side truly is. If an offensive comment isn’t removed in 2 seconds of it being posted, then this proves the true motives of the campaign.

I don’t think that the idiot who posted on Obama’s website reflects on Obama or the campaign and likewise the idiots who posted McCain’s website are not reflective of that campaign. In the end it’s about small minded people who have nothing better to do. That’s all.