Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Gliberty On The March

Her Majesty has made it official: The Atlantic is so desperate that commenters must register, so The Atlantic can sell the registrant's e-mails to whichever spammer offers the best price.

All I can say is, I've run open comments for eight years--and I don't feel that I am legally or morally obligated to spend precious minutes of my lives deleting graphic references to my gender, person, or private life.
The question, of course, is not if anyone "feels" they are morally or legally obligated. The question is: Are you legally or morally obligated? If not, just don't spend precious moments of your lives (?) doing that. Grow a skin. Really, what did she expect would happen when her selfish idiocy obtained a larger forum? BTW, if one doesn't want graphic references to one's "private life," one should keep it private by shutting the hell up about it.

And, since we're discussing her blog, why doesn't she spend some precious minutes updating her Comment/Gadget Of The Week sections, both of which have been static since December? I bet the IT people who installed the censorship system got a big laugh from how long those have been sitting there. Maybe we'll see some action there soon, now that she has precious minutes back in her lives (?) not to go over the comments. Or, she could just admit she's incompetent & give those up. 

Which leads to another question. If you were a big muckety-muck at The Atlantic, would you pick one of your web loggers to edit your "Business Channel" if said blogger couldn't keep her own fucking blog up to date? Or correct her own typos? Or anything?

We'll also note that she went Jane Galt for a whole wknd., yet The Atlantic manged to muddle through w/o her.

4 comments:

Downpuppy said...

You haven't covered it yet, but the Maxine Waters slur is just ugly. Absolute, naked bias, untainted by any pretense of analysis.

Making fun of Megan is a lot less fun when she turns into a low rent Lou Dobbs.

Anonymous said...

I think you're right about selling the e-mail addresses. She's switching to registered comments under the pretense that she can now ban repeat offenders but, as many people here know, she could do that before. You're good for calling her out for not "feeling" legally or morally obligated. Legality isn't a matter of your personal "feelings," and morality has nothing to do with anything she's writing about in that post. Really, "in which I defend my immoral blog commenting policy"?

Dhalgren said...

and I don't feel that I am legally or morally obligated to spend precious minutes of my lives [sic] deleting graphic references to my gender, person, or private life.

Somehow, the words, 'you started it' come to mind.

And yes, lives is a good word. She's on her second or third professional life (The Economist, then The Atlantic....one failed publication to another).

I thought long and hard about this, as I'm sure this will cost me some commenters. But it's simply gotten out of hand. Every time I've gotten a link from certain liberal blogs, I've gotten a flood of commenters who believe it is the height of wit to call me (or other commenters) names, or speculate on the wilder details of my sex life. Over time, those commenters have accumulated, and they're now chasing away people who want to have a conversation beyond "Here's what I hate about [liberals/conservatives]!" or spewing insults at a third grade reading level.

You're welcome. And don't ever come back to New York City.

Anonymous said...

I love how she made a big point of saying that racist commenters would be banned, and then did absolutely nothing about a whole bunch of jokes about Maxine Waters being black.