Digby does one of these posts once in awhile and it's always a very good read.

He focuses in on the media coverage disconnect between the rhetorical abuses on the right and those on the left. Go give the whole post a read and you'll just find youself saying, yep .... yep ..... yeah .... ah huh ......

For those of us ADD types here's my version. Recently Joe Klein (so-called liberal) and Howie Kurtz (kinda liberal), both mainstream media columnists have been having a case of the vapors over some anonymous (I repeat ANONYMOUS) comments made over at the Huffington Post. The comments were along the lines of, too bad those bombers didn't get Cheney when he was in Afghanistan. When Joe and Howie got wind of such "vile" "disgusting" comments, you'd have thought someone put a flaming bag of crap on their doorstep and rang the doorbell.

Contrast this event with the bile regularly spewing out of Glenn Beck, Brit Hume, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, et. al. who are far from anonymous and who have a much larger audience. These "journalists" are virtually never held accountable by media types (other than Eric Alterman), particularly by the likes of Joe Klein and Howie Kurtz who would rather waste time eating their own. Digby outlines the specifics and it's really quite revealing.

Anyone who spends more than a few minutes on the internets, and in the blogosphere, knows that commenters range the spectrum. Nutbars often comment with strange, weird, disgusting comments. Maintenance on a web site of the "comments section" is a regular duty of any blogger, but especially those with a lot of traffic. Many bloggers don't have comments sections because of the work involved. If Howie and Joe ever took a moment to visit Little Green Footballs (a right-wing blog of real nutbars) and checked out a comment or two there, well, there may not be enough smelling salts on the planet.

A finally word. It is very, very, very common for anonymous commentors to be plants. I could easily go to LGF and post something like "I think it's time to polish and clean my 30/30 so I can take out Hillary" and no one would know where it came from. For some folks, this is sport and good fun when bored. And if you can get media schmucks like Kurtz and Klein fired up with such activity, well all the more fun! It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the Huffington commentors were just that. All-in-all comments can be a good source of info, but filtered quite extensively remembering that you're in a public square where no one has to identify themselves. That opens the possiblity for alot of shenighans to occur.

I really wish media types would understand the blogsophere before commenting on it in their columns. It would really make life simplier for everyone and save alot of wasted time in the educating of the likes of Klein and Kurtz. If they'd get their heads out of the arses long enough, they might realize stuff like this:


or how about this?


Ok Joe .... Howie ... let's hear about it.

Update: Howie? Joe? Here's some meat for you to write about. Note the attempt at civil discourse ..... the genuine concern for the feelings of others, the attempts to find a middle ground where grown-ups can meet, have a beer, and disagree:

Ms. Coulter, asked for a reaction to the Republican criticism, said in an e-mail message: “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean.”