One danger of democratic media, at least to the owners of user-driven sites, is that you may be held responsible for what other people say about what you have said. Here at Mediachannel, we have a very liberal policy when it comes to comments; as long as they aren’t selling anything (say, pharmaceuticals or pornography), we leave them up, and our comments reflect the range of opinion among our readership, which we think is great.

Now, after Cheney’s disastrous visit to Afghanistan, some of the conservatives in the media began a virtual witch hunt on the left-wing blogosphere. Here’s what they came up with, reported Glenn Greenwald:

From Tuesday’s post on the moronic Cheney comments “scandal”:

It is only a matter of time before Brit Hume and Matt Drudge begin hyping the scandal of how liberal bloggers were expressing dismay that Dick Cheney wasn’t killed, and Howard Kurtz will write a drooling profile of the Blogging Warriors who exposed this scandal and join in with stern condemnation over how terrible it is that the Left is so filled with venom and rage.

Howard Kurtz today, in The Washington Post:

This is really sick.

I know we’re living in a polarized time. I know there are people who absolutely detest George Bush and Dick Cheney. I know they like to vent their spleen online, sometimes in vulgar terms, and hey, that’s life in a democracy.

But some of the comments posted after a suicide bomber blew himself up at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Force Base, while Cheney was there–killing as many as 23 people–are nothing short of vile.

The comments appeared on the Huffington Post, which, to its credit, took them down. But some were preserved by Michelle Malkin, and I reproduce them here . . .

Says Malkin: “Whatever your partisan leanings, an attack planned on the Vice President of the United States is an attack on America. Some of our fellow Americans, however, can’t put their sneering hatred of the White House aside.”

Says me: Don’t people realize that openly rooting for the death of an American official says way more about them than their intended target?

Kurtz then cursorily adds, buried at the bottom of his column:

I would agree that it’s absurd to view these assassination fantasies as anything other than the rantings of the fringe, and that they shouldn’t be used to tar an entire ideology.

No, perish the thought. Nobody would ever try to suggest that these 200 or so comments are reflective of anything important at all.

Greg Sargent of the Horse’s Mouth agrees:

Kurtz says that tarring an ideology with a few vile comments is an absurd tactic in general — without noting that this is exactly what Malkin is doing. Why tiptoe around the truly vile nature of this woman? Is the prospect of being targeted by her readership of pod-people really all that frightening?

Relatedly, how about a serious takeout on all the vile, bigoted, bloodthirsty comments you see at sites like Little Green Footballs? The other day, hapless wingnut Charles Johnson put up a post at LGF which contained a photo of leaders from Iran and Syria under the title: “Definition of a Target-Rich Environment.” Some of the comments: “Kill them. Now.” “If only it were so.” “Satan aka Allah is in that room.” “I smell…felafel farts.” None of those comments has been removed — unlike the ones at Huffington Post, which were taken down.

The CarpetBagger Report opines thusly:

Back in August, Kevin Drum came up with a sensible maxim: “If you’re forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you’ve pretty much made exactly the opposite point.” It’s an easy-to-understand concept, which the right has chosen to ignore.

Take this week, for example. A suicide bomber killed nearly two dozen people in Afghanistan at a U.S. military base where Cheney was located. Plenty of liberal bloggers reported on the attack, including me, and the right was anxious to find examples of writers celebrating the bombing. When they had trouble, the right started trawling through comments sections.

Malkin found some Huffington Post commenters saying things such as “Better luck next time!” and “Dr. Evil escapes again … damn.” HuffPo took down the inappropriate comments, but it didn’t matter — the fact that they existed was proof of … well, it’s a little unclear what.

(H/T: Cursor)

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