Arianna Huffington on Internet Porn
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A Huffington Post luncheon at the Nicollet Island Inn earlier today explored how "the new media are impacting the '08 race." Hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the panel was conducted like a TV show, the hosts agreeing with each other and sometimes talking over the panelists, who included Tony Blankley, Huffington, Laura Ingraham, David Kralik, Cyrus Krohn, and Peggy Noonan.
The hot topic for discussion was whether the Internet drove the Sarah Palin pregnancy story.
As in any media panel, discussion also touched on how to make people pay to visit web sites. "Usually the only people pay for online is porn," Huffington said. "And weird porn."
Think Progress has a more complete report on the discussion:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/01/media-panel-st-paul/
It seems much of the discussion focused on how vicious the left wing of the so-called blogosphere is. With all due respect to the panelists, this is a ludicrous assertion. I realize that this could quickly degenerate into a schoolyard "you stink, well, you stink worse" kind of argument, but I'll make a few points to stake down this point.
1. The Free Republic. No liberal web site of any import approaches the filth and hate speech routinely circulated on this site. It was only a few months ago that members of that forum routinely advocated gang-raping Hillary Clinton to "keep her in line," with no objection from the moderators. If it were some fringe blog with ten members, it wouldn't be worth notice, but it is one of the premier right-wing blogs/forums on the net. It is the home of, among others, Jerome Corsi and other SwiftBoaters. It is also the originator of the smear campaign that brought down Dan Rather and made George Bush's desertion a taboo subject. To argue that left-wing bloggers sink to a gutter level of discourse that is not matched on the right is an outright lie. Note that I am talking about relatively prominent blogs. This does not apply to fringe sites with small communities that air sometimes-extreme views. Compare the Free Republic with, say, the Daily Kos or Firedoglake. The difference is dramatic.
2. The left-wing blogs that I frequent welcome comment of all stripes. Conservative posters are (with exceptions) treated seriously until and unless they begin indulging in personal attacks and invective against the other posters. In contrast, most conservative blogs do not allow posting at all, or when they do, the posts are heavily moderated. Transgressors who advocate positions at odds with the blog's owners and operators are routinely banned.
The "right" was typified for me as Limbaugh smacking any woman that spoke up as a "feminazi."
With tens of millions of listeners, the "right" was ecstatic to have a bullhorn crashing through the liberal tea house discussion.
Limbaugh made it okay for right-wing extremists like Coulter and Beck and O'Reilly to start openly talking about murdering the left-wing (or anyone not like right-wing extremists like themselves).
Coulter talked about massacring muslims, Beck fantasized about murdering Michael Moore, O'Reilly thought it was okay for terrorists to bomb San Francisco.
And now that the internet has allowed citizens to speak up, suddenly right-wingers like Scarborough are made at potty-mouthed lefties.
It's right-wingers that have allowed and even encouraged eliminationist rhetoric to flourish on the right that's the real obscenity.
Huffington needs to be liquidated.