This post was mentioned on Twitter by TMV: Blog Removes Racist Image of Michelle Obama: One of the Internet news stories over the past few days has focused on… http://bit.ly/7QLGv8...

Excuse me? Sure, some people's idea of expression will be racist… or islamist… or socialist… or fascist… or cat obsessed… or whatever, and they might not so much break the bounds of good taste as jump up and down on the shattered fragments of decency whilst screaming bawdy songs. That is not a bug, it is a feature… no, more than a feature, it is the whole damn point of blogs: the blogger expresses their views directly to whoever wants to read them without anyone intermediating themselves in-between (such as an editor who can be pressured by shareholders or advertisers or the state).

So you don't like someone's content? Too bad. Either criticise it (as indeed you are) or ignore it, but if you were expecting the same old accepted sensibilities that dominate the mainstream media, then you clearly do not understand what blogs are all about. It may not always be pretty but that is what people actually do think.

From the printing press onward, every new technology has been used by pornographers and extremists as well as poets and statesmen. What blogging has done is made it tremendously more easy for anyone to have a voice. I think the benefits of that far outweigh the failures. But unless we restrict who can blog, bad people will, too.