The P-D online has reduce the number of overtly racist comments by patrolling comments more, but it’s not hard to find these:
ustracn15 August 15, 2009 2:26PM CST
Good luck educating the savages1 After all it be kool to be stoopid!
The best description of the problem comes from the Post-Dispatch in talking about teabaggers:
People who use rude interruption and desperate anger as their principal outlet for community activism can expect to lose public sympathy quickly. Indeed, they may find themselves out in the cold, having forfeited by their conduct any claim to participate in the conversation.
Unfortunately, people crudely who make fun of death, who ridicule students in stories about attempts to improve students’ performance, who use code words to refer to African-Americans and Latinos while claiming to not be talking about racism will always have a place to participate in the conversation–in the Post-Dispatch online.
Larry,
Who cares? What about your pal Jeff Smith? Saw you mentioned a few times in the FEC investigation.
I care–and in fact I’ve been spending a lot of time on it. Newspapers have turned their web sites over to white supremacists and loons. If a newspaper is going to try and be the civic discussion forum, letting people piss all over it isn’t appropriate.
Some of us didn’t take our ball and go home to never be seen in politics again, Mark. Losing a race isn’t an invitation to disappear–at least if you actually care.
As far as Jeff, I think Tony Messenger has the best pieces on the situation so far. He’s obviously in a lot of trouble.
I am mentioned in the initial report and Lilliard’ response, but if you notice there is no allegation of wrong doing. Brian Herman and I tried to figure out who was behind it. It’s fairly well described in the report other than Brian was the person who made the call–thus we used Joe’s name since Brian was calling from his residence hall and both he and I had our names tied to Jeff pretty closely.
Turns out, Lilliard was even dumber than we thought and took $300 in cash from some random guy–probably from Ohlsen ultimately. I told this to the FEC in 2006 and they didn’t seem to have any problem with it. However, they should have asked me if I knew who Steve Brown was because I would have given them his phone number–I am baffled that they couldn’t find him. They never asked me–and if I had read the FEC report before last weekend, I would have figured out what was going on.
I too care.
Its absolutely disgusting that 90% of the comments on nearly every story on the P-D website are racist/sexist, many times without relation to the actual story. One story in the past that got me especially stirred up and livid was the small report on the African American contractors protest downtown during Obama’s visit for the All Star Game. One comment from some hick, probably in southwest Missouri, essentially said “I want to know every bridge, road built by a colored group so I can avoid it.”
Sighs.
I have to remind myself while most of the country is in the 21st century, most of Missouri is still stuck in George Wallace America.
It speaks volumes about the lack of oversight, and I can only think its because they’ve cut so many jobs…or they don’t really care. I no longer post comments there, I know many more who are like me, we just don’t want to sign onto something that endorses racist behavior.