Let’s return now to the 8th Congressional district and the Democratic primary campaign, OK?I’m going to piggyback on a good post from Above Average Jane concerning the blogs of candidates Patrick Murphy and Andy Warren. As you can read, the Murphy blog is a bit more tolerant of contrary opinion and the occasional bit of snark than the Warren blog is.
After I read this Wednesday evening, I thought I’d act as a reasonably informed and involved citizen and leave a comment on the Warren site (under Warren’s post called “Enough Is Enough”). In my comment, I pointed out that, though Warren stated on his site that he was the only candidate who supported bringing our troops home from Iraq right now, Patrick Murphy had also stated that on his site (I don’t know for certain, but I’m quite sure Patrick did so before Warren – Josh Nanberg of the Murphy campaign said that this was so, and also Patrick’s site was up and running before Warren’s site). I also remarked that I thought Warren’s campaign was disintegrating over this stupid “residency” non issue pertaining to Murphy that Warren keeps yakking about. After I posted my comment, I received a notice that the comment was currently pending moderation.
OK, fair enough.
So I checked back yesterday evening, but it turns out that my comment had not been published. I then entered another comment, previewed it, and did a screen capture (you can view my unpublished comment here).
I’ve checked back at the Warren site several times so far today, and my comment has not been published. At this point, I don’t expect that it will.
Now, for disclosure purposes, I should back up at this point and mention that I have this site set up for comment moderation also. However, I wrote a comments policy that appears near the bottom of the right-hand column that states what is and isn’t acceptable (I could not find this at Warren’s site). The only thing I really don’t tolerate is if someone calls me names or uses the comment forum to pontificate on anything they feel like that may or may not have a connection to the posted topic. The bottom line is that if you act like an adult here, you’ll be absolutely fine. I know it may seem silly to have comment moderation since I don’t get a lot of comments, but it seems that whenever I turn comment moderation off, I start having an issue with somebody.
Besides (and here is an important distinction), I’m not running for elected office. Andy Warren is. Given that, you’d better be ready to take the good with the bad.
And honestly now, what does that say about Warren that he apparently doesn’t realize that?
Update 4/23: And here all this time I thought it was just me, when apparently this has been going on for a little while now (Jon Laramie of the Warren campaign must be contemplating a new career as a stand-up comedian, suggesting that Patrick Murphy could work for Andy Warren after May 17th...the problem with that, as with any bad joke, is that the punchline has to have some basis in reality - Laramie's opening act could be "Tina," who referred to Patrick Murphy as "a closeted Republican").
3 comments:
I left this over at aboveavgjane, but I think it sums up my thoughts so I wanted to add it over hear as well:
There is an important point to be made here. Owners of blogs can choose to have comments or not. They can even choose to delete comments, especially if they are abusive, obscene, etc. and the blog has put its readers on notice that such comments will be shot on sight.
What is real problematic is when a political candidate is using their blog, which seems to invite a good dose of discourse by allowing unfettered comments, as a means to fraudulently effect the public's view of the candidate.
This is the kind of stuff that you would see from the blog at GOP.com. If it doesn't fit the message, than it isn't worth the space. This is fitting coming from a candidate who resided in the anti-progressive halls of the GOP for his whole life up to this point.
I had one of my comments deleted and, at least to me, it seemed to raise fair questions about Andy Warren's honesty. To delete my comments and others like it is a regressive attempt to stifle dissent at best, and, more likely and much worse, an attempt to dupe the voters in Bucks County into thinking that everyone just adores Andy Warren and hates Patrick Murphy (which is far from the truth).
For a candidate that claims to be a born again progressive, Andy should be ashamed. Kudos to Murphy and his blog for being able to listen and deal with dissenting opinions that are vital to the national discourse.
I admit, I posted one of those anonymous comments in the screen shots. And I'm not sorry I did so--my comment was not offensive or insulting. I just pointed out that Andy edits these posts to reflect only positive comments about himself and negative comments about Pat Murphy!
And now I'm blocked. I got a message the other day when I checked out his blog that I'm been BANNED by the webmaster and any comments I try to leave will not be added.
tick, tock, Andy....your career is over in just two weeks!
Thanks, Doomsy, for calling attention to this.
I echo everyone's sentiments. It really says something about Warren that he's doing so much to stifle dissent (and someone please explain again how representative that is of our party?). Thanks.
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