There were two comments made earlier today in two separate diaries that I would like to draw the attention of the Daily Kos community towards. Both the comments contain accusations/assertions of racism.
Post continued below the fold.
Comment A:
And racist (0 / 0)
by Poster A Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 09:54:35 AM PDT
Diary: Obama’s sloppy opposition team
In this comment, Poster A, who is a well-recognized supporter/promoter of John Edwards, was referring to the recent story about Obama campaign's "Clinton (D-Punjab)" opposition memo and he directly asserts that the Obama campaign is racist. The reader may wish to see Obama's latest statement about his campaign's memo here .
As can be seen above, comment A received no ratings of either kind, "Recommend" or "Troll", at the time I copied over the text.
Comment B:
And the first to say (4+ / 10-)
only a white men should run for president.
by Poster B on Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 04:16:17 PM PDT
Diary (now deleted): Why John Edwards
In this comment, Poster B was referring to John Edwards' self-proclaimed assertion of having superior capability to campaign "anyplace in America" (Edwards: "I think it's just a reality that I can campaign anyplace in America"). Apparently, Poster B interprets Edwards' assertion to have racist/sexist connotations.
Comment B received the totals of 10 Troll ratings and 4 Recommend ratings, which clearly represent a starkly different treatment of Comment B, compared to what Comment A received. One of those Recommend ratings has been given by me in order to make this comment visible to all members of the community, as without it, the comment would be "Hidden" and hence would be visible only to "Trusted Users" ("TUs").
Clearly, Comment B received severe pounding in terms of troll ratings, by posters most of whom, but likely not all, are easily identifiable as advocates of John Edwards for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
The primary purpose of my post is to posit the "meta" question (addressed to the Daily Kos member community) on how comments containing accusations, assertions or implications of racism should be dealt with in terms of comment ratings.
The specific question that I ask here is the following: if Comment B deserves to be troll rated (TRed), doesn't Comment A deserve the same as well?
Of course, judging a comment for being worthy of either a Recommend or a Troll rating would and should depend on the background behind those comments, which in this case is comprised of Obama campaign's memo (for Comment A), and Edwards' remarks (for Comment B).
Please take the following poll after reaching your own opinions regarding the comments and the background material. I welcome any recommendations of the diary and comments posted in response to it. Thank you.