Iron-o-meter Lost In Shipping

When I follow the Instapundit links, I sometimes find myself hopping through, link to link, and discovering interesting blogs. I clicked through to Feministe yesterday and read an interesting complaint about the lack of news coverage a dramatic event received. Feministe was outraged that a man had driven his car into a Woman’s Health Center on 9/11/06 in an attempted suicide, but the media had barely reported it. If it were an Arab or a Muslim, she said, it would be all over the news. But because it was an anti-abortion Christian fundamentalist, no one made much of it. She linked to one of the few stories about it. She complained about the three decades of extreme violence by antiabortionists

There was a comments section below that linked article, and some of the comments were stupid and hateful, as Feministe and her commenters had claimed. When I commented, I acknowledged that, and condemned the attempt to harm innocents. Because there was no report of deaths or injuries, I assumed that no one had actully been hurt. But just to check, I ran down the story as best I could.

Well, the attempted had taken place at 4:30am, so no lives were endangered. Feministe left that part out. There was no source in the news articles that the person was a Christian fundamentalist. Perhaps Feministe added that in. The comments section with the hateful comments also had hateful comments on the other side. Feministe left that out. I pointed all this out, more gently than I did here, and made several other critical but polite comments. I did not mention, but could have, that hateful comments are often plants or left by trolls, and may not actually represent the thoughts of an actual person. She took them at face value, and I didn’t challenge that.

I was expecting to be flamed, which can be amusing, but there was also a chance that there was a good response, or more information. So I checked the comment responses to see.

My comment had been deleted. Heh.

People can run their own blog whatever way they want, of course, and can make them a shrine to their own opinions and cheerleaders. But if you’re going to delete opposing comments, politely expressed, then the one thing you really can’t complain about is the media suppressing news. A calm or circumspect person might have noticed that irony.

Apparently delivery on her Iron-o-meter has been delayed.