Today Kevin Drum deleted one of my comments and referred me to his explicitly arbitrary commenting policy (its being arbitrary wouldn't be a bad thing, except that it's enforced in a bad way). In the comment, I stuck up for a commenter who another commenter unfairly accused of being a troll. Here's what I wrote in the comment Kevin found so horrible that he had to delete it, as far as I can remember:
Hey Kevin! How about deleting comments 12:20 through 1:59? If I didn't know better, sometimes judging from the comments on this blog, I'd believe this was some kind of blog hosted by myspace, rather than a blog maintained for adults.
Glenn wrote:
So Watson made an asshole comment. What does that have to do with anything? Demanding that liberal blogs denounce Watson lest their failure be found to be evidence of approval and hypocrisy is by definition a troll comment. See also, e.g., Ward Churchill et al. It's also, by the way, moronic.
I wonder where I can find that definition of a troll comment? As far as I've seen, the only place is Glenn on October 21, 2007 at 12:50 PM, PERMALINK. Also, Steve Sailer didn't say anything accusing people who don't write about Watson of being hypocrites or of approval. You are putting words in his mouth.
Steve Sailer just suggested that liberals write about what Watson said. Merely making a suggestion doesn't make you a troll.
Amazingly, Kevin saw fit to delete all of this. Kevin is some cowardly rich guy, and like all people from that social set, he's way too concerned about what other rich people think of him and probably thinks that his life is going to be instantly destroyed if anything that could embarrass him or discredit his blog passes in front of their eyes once. I know it's childish, but tell that to him and all the people who raise people like him, don't tell it to me. So I think the part of my comment he was really offended by was the myspace part. The permalink of the whole comment thread so you can check this all out is here.
Kevin is doing a bad job of policing his comments, obviously. I definitely don't think Kevin is not a real liberal, or that he can't tell at all what's a troll comment or what's not. I think he's intelligent enough that he must have a sense that this troll thing is a really big problem and is more than just a few conservative pranksters or a few conservative assholes who have delusions of grandeur and think that they are going to influence the whole nation through home-made psychological tricks and deception. I think he's scared that if he doesn't acquiesce in the face of it, there are going to be repercussions for him. But I think that Kevin needs to chill the hell out, and that nothing bad is going to happen to him, and what liberals need to do is stop stampeding in the wrong direction of where they need to be going every time some conservative makes a little noise.
So, there you have it. Kevin is doing something wrong and making a huge mistake, but what can you do. You can't count on everyone who writes a good blog to always be intelligent and to always make the correct decisions.
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