It was just one month ago that many conservative writers and pundits were on the warpath against CBS late night comedian David Letterman for Letterman’s inappropriate remarks about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter. New and old media pundits raged about how rotten and hateful it was for Letterman to use jokes to drag Palin’s daughter into the political mud. There were demands that Letterman apologize (he did).
But now the highly popular and lively conservative website/blog Free Republic is at the center of a controversy about its commenters taking potshots at President Barack Obama’s 11-year-old daughter Malia — comments that not only went after a minor but also included statements unabashedly racist and of the kind that would lead to commenters being banned permanently from commenting on most sites of the left, center and right.
The comes within the context of modern day America where the most frequently seen commodity is no longer the seemingly inescapable Subway sandwich shop, but the gas-tanker-sized dose of rage and outrage that at any given moment is bursting and flaming in the new and old media due to a news cycle that moves at microsecond speed, sites that need to feed the information beast, and the desire to attract readership and viewership.
The partisan rage is generally vented when a member of one side’s “sports (political) team” is impacted. These proclamations and expressions of rage that seemingly reflected deeply ingrained heartfelt values are then immediately jettisoned when there’s a chance to take an equally cheap shot at the other side. Values schmalues we don’t agree with them so they’re the enemy and deserve it!.
This controversy has come to the notice of the Vancouver Sun and has started to make the rounds of the Internet — and will likely be a topic on some talk shows come Monday. (In an email to TMV, one blogger reports having created an account on the site and writing an open letter to Free Republic about the racist comments but she says her comment was removed.) Here’s some of the Sun piece:
“A typical street whore.” “A bunch of ghetto thugs.” “Ghetto street trash.” “Wonder when she will get her first abortion.”
These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative ‘Free Republic’ blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama’s 11-year-old daughter Malia after she was photographed wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.
The thread was accompanied by a photo of Michelle Obama speaking to Malia that featured the caption, “To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds.”
What does this tell us? That this can’t exactly be confused with a thread on the Christian Science Monitor… MORE:
Though this may sound like the sort of thing one might read on an Aryan Nation or white power website, they actually appeared on what is commonly considered one of the prime online locations for U.S. Conservative grassroots political discussion and organizing – and for a short time, the comments seemed to have the okay of site administrators.
Moderators of the blog left the comments – and commenters – in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later.
A bit more of the piece:
“Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?” wrote one commenter.
“They make me sick …. The whole family… mammy, pappy, the free loadin’ mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin’, and especially ‘lil cuz… This is not the America I want representin’ my peeps,” wrote another.
Such was the onslaught of derision on the site that the person who originally complained about the slurs, a Kristin N., claims only one comment in the first hundred posted actually criticized the remarks as inappropriate.
A note on the front of the blog reads, “Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government,” but one comment on the thread read, “This disgusting display makes me more and more eager for the revolution,” while another read, “I never actually wnated [sic] to be a pistol before but…”
According to the Sun, the thread was removed and reviewed — but later appeared again intact ” and attracted a new series of racial slurs when the original complaint email was posted publicly to the site, with the sender’s email address intact.
“The writer has a point,” wrote site owner Jim Thompson sarcastically. “We should steer clear of Obama’s children. They can’t help it if their old man is an American-hating Marxist pig.”
To be fair, comments are always highly problematical on new media news sites and can get out of hand. I know of one blogger some years ago who almost went off the deep end due to readers comments and quit blogging totally. Monitoring comments is not always possible if blog writers or owners are not wedded to their computer and have other tasks (or lives). And most blogs don’t have people sitting down reading each comment as they come or threads that may be raging beneath posted new pieces or article excerpts.
But there are guidelines — and usually when something crosses the line on most sites, the material that goes way over the site’s line is either removed or there’s a warning. Here at TMV, for instance, there are often spirited internal debates over what may cross the line and some people are given second chances. TMV writers and editors are not always online so there may be a delay. But TMV like most sites will permanently remove parts of a thread that clearly “crosses the line” even if the line is debated internally.
Blatant racism crosses the line; even a broad definition of “the line” won’t allow it and most sites of the left, right and center that do any kind of monitoring of comments want to clean their sites of such verbal filth so it’s not there forever, indexed on search engines and bringing dishonor to the entire site.
In this case, the comments seemed akin to the kind of polemics nurtured by America’s talk radio political culture which puts a high premium on insults and the personal demonization or mocking of those who may belong to another party or be ideologically different.
Except in this case a few heaping cupfuls of racism were thrown in.
But on most sites, if something is judged way over the line it is removed and stays removed.
It could be argued this entire broo-ha-ha is a free speech issue — except that wasn’t exactly the argument used a month ago when Letterman was correctly lambasted for joking about Palins underage kids (Letterman also violated an informal a rule in comedy that you’re better off joking UP as in making fun of the boss or a powerful person versus joking DOWN at someone who is truly vulnerable) — and many commenters on Free Republic were blasting Letterman for joking about Palin’s daughter.
Read the entire Sun piece. Even a can of Beefaroni on a shelf at Vons Supermarket on Adams Avenue in San Diego would know these comments are racist. The comments should have been pulled as soon as they were noticed and put into the Internet septic tank where they belong.
Meanwhile, the big liberal site Daily Kos has covered the Free Republic controversy and the two sites have seemingly engaged each other on this issue. Read THIS POST in full for the details.
FOOTNOTE: I personally get emails from TMV readers who are upset but they seldom have made fun of my religion. Most include suggestions about where I should stick my computer but it won’t fit up there.
UPDATE: A reader in comments points us to Foster Kramer’s must-read Gawker post that sheds some light on the author of the Vancouver Sun article and a controversy apparently surrounding him. That does not change the issues that are raised in this post (and in fact, in comments below you will see ample evidence of conservatives who don’t approve of comments that cross the line..)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.