This is really pissing me off. I wrote two comments to a blog by Earl Ofari Hutchinson last night that have disappeared along with several other comments. Then another comment this morning mentioning the two scrubbed comments, and that comment has not appeared. Details after the jump.
Mr Hutchinson wrote a blog initially titled "Schillings Challenge to Clemons Won't Erase the Bonds Double Standard." No, I didn't make a mistake typing the title. Hutchinson wrote a rant about baseball and steroids in which he misspelled Roger Clemens name in the headline and repeatedly throughout the article. In the piece, Hutchinson makes the case that Clemens alledged steroid use has been met with far less outcry than that of Barry Bonds and therefore proves a racist double standard in how white America treats our sports heroes. My initial comment, the first in line for this blog, was that anyone who can't correctly spell the name of one of the sport's biggest stars and the subject of his own blog has no business even writing about baseball to begin with.
My second comment took issue with Mr. Hutchinson's conclusion that Bonds was the victim of a racist double standard. I made the point that Bonds was about as much a victim of racism as O.J. was. I also said that both Bonds and Clemens should be banned from the Hall of Fame.
This morning, I checked the site to see, like most of us do, whether there had been any replies to my comments. Lo and behold, the article had been corrected and all the "Clemonses" changed to "Clemenses" (no problem with that) and the date on the blog changed from Dec 20 to Dec 21 (that's a little misleading but still I've got no big problem with that) but my original comments along with about half a dozen other comments were gone (big problem with that).
So I wrote another comment mentioning the two that had been scrubbed summarizing what I'd said and posted it. That was over an hour ago; the the comment has not come up. So it appears that Huffington Post is scrubbing and blocking comments that might be embarrassing to one of its bloggers. I don't mind them correcting mistakes, but they should acknowledge that and leave the comments alone. My first comment went to the credibility of the writer. Am I just being pissy about this, or do I have a legitimate complaint? Have others had this problem with Huffington Post? I'm interested in what others have to say. It doesn't feel very democratic to me.