The Washington Post's embattled ombudsman, Deborah Howell, responded to critics today on the Washington Post blog. Readers posted a lot of comments in response. And at 4pm today, the Post deleted all the comments and wrote the following explanation:
As of 4:15 p.m. ET today, we have shut off comments on this blog indefinitely.... there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being.
But an initial look at the deleted comments, all of which are conveniently archived by Democratic Underground, doesn't show a lot of hate speech or profanity. The only swear word I could find, for example, was "bullshit." And while some of the criticism is harsh, to be sure - hey, you're the ombudsman, get used to it - actually, some of it is rather hysterical, to wit:
Dear Mrs. Howell,
Gilligan, the Skipper, The Professor and Mary Ann all voted you off the island.
Thurston Howell III says he wants a divorce.
Better start looking for a raft.
The Washington Post is treading into dangerous territory here with regards to its reputation with an entire generation of pundits, opinion-makers, and readers. It's one thing for our president to try to skew the facts and stifle debate, it's quite another for what used to be one of the nation's greatest newspapers to start showing the same immature anti-intellectual qualities.
