Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Over the last few hours, the more than 400 comments appended to the Huffington Post’s news item on the attack in Afghanistan on a base being visited by Vice-President Dick Cheney have been expunged from the site. At first the comments were closed, then gradually shrunken and for a short time completely expunged from The Huffington Post as the heat on the Cheney hate fest built up over the day.

For earlier reports on this go HERE. And for the PDF of the original file of the now erased Huffington comments, courtesy of Michelle Malkin, go HERE.

From around 2:50 PM, all the comments to the original thread were missing, but of late some have turned up at the new item that occupies the same address, “Over 20 Die in Attack Aimed at Cheney.” The current page shows a marked difference from the original page. Where the original headline read, “Cheney ‘Targeted’ Deadly Afghan Blast,” the current head now reads, “Over 20 Die in Attack Aimed at Cheney.” This may well be a headline that is better informed as the reporting of the incident evolved over the day.

What is truly bizarre and unprecedented, however, is the manner in which the current comment thread unfolds before it too is closed:

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The comments now visible are evidently cherry-picked out of the original thread to give some sort of “tone” to the thread that it did not originally possess. It is really amazing what you can do to history with just a few strokes of the keyboard.

Jane Hamster @Firedoglake is peeved she's taken seconds when put in a line with Kos of Kos Daily. That's par for the course since Jane's been in a perpetual state of peeve since she caught a dose of BDS and it metastasized into the implants. **

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No woman in love with an impossible goddess could have done more to mock her love object than you have done, Jane. Just lay back, select a cucumber, and think of England.

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That depends on what the meaning of megaphone is. Should you be thinking of an actual megaphone -- that device that would amplify your shrill and caustic tones to a level that would cause dogs to implode -- nobody's had one of those since the days of Rootie Kazootie. If you are talking about a metaphoric megaphone in which "megaphone" stands for the male organ of generation, be of good cheer. Having one bigger than Markos's is like bragging about a three-inch penis. He's not exactly the Ron Jeremy of the Blogosphere you know. Then again, if by megaphone you are thinking of the buttocks, remain confident that you are bigger than Markos.