Is it worth it to the few who posted these comments on Huff Post? Not only does Arianna have to deal with moderating these self-indulgent posters, but Right-Wing commentators have the next day's vitriol handed to them on a silver platter. And Arianna's site is not the only progressive site for which this is often an issue.
02.28.2007
Limbaugh, Hannity, and the Right's Faux Fury Over Anonymous Comments
On Tuesday morning, The Huffington Post linked to an AP news story on the suicide bombing at the gates of the main American base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.
A miniscule portion of the people who read that story chose to take advantage of the anonymous, open forum nature of comments in our news section to express regret that the Vice President hadn't been killed in the attack.
As soon as these offensive comments came to our attention, they were deleted from the site. But that didn't stop the right-wing hit machine from seizing on the anonymous comments in an effort to prove that "Democrats and liberals" (as Rush, able to divine party affiliation and political philosophy from a username, quickly labeled the commenters) "have a hatred and a disgust for Cheney...that cannot be explained."
Before I get into how ludicrous this claim is, let me be absolutely clear: No one at HuffPost is defending these comments -- they are unacceptable and were treated as such by being removed. They were not made by me, by our editors, or by our bloggers. They were made by anonymous visitors to the site -- visitors that make up a very, very small unrepresentative portion of our readers.
Trying to balance the freedom and openness of the Internet with the desire to be responsible and avoid these kinds of outrageous comments can sometimes be challenging. But the fact remains: only a fraction of Huffington Post readers comment on news stories, and only a tiny fraction of those responded to the Cheney story in such an offensive manner....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/limbaugh-hannity-and-th_b_42333.html