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On Comments

It has been an unwritten rule here at The Files that I will not tolerate the advocating of violence against anyone in comments left on my site. Sure you can make fun of someone and I will tolerate a certain, though not excessive, amount of profanity. But one thing that I forbid is wishing harm come to anyone, no matter how deserving of scorn that person may be.

Not that such pronouncements will matter to some on the right, who will use any accuse available to try to prove how 'unhinged' and 'hateful' the left truly is. Lately that has taken the form of holding up the worst examples of violent and loathsome comments made to prominent lefty sites as evidence of this.

The practice was again on display after the failed attempt on Vice President Cheney's life yesterday in Afghanistan. The hypocrisy is astounding. We on the left are scolded for failing to denounce every nutjob who leaves a comment on our blogs but no similar effort is ever made by the right to police their own. Yet when we delete such insipid comments, we are accused of destroying evidence of the left's hatred. A win-win tactic if ever there was one.

And this picking and choosing of the worst offenders among the left to defame the group as a whole only points to how desperate the right is to avoid taking responsibility for the hatemongers in their midst. Indeed, if the same measure were applied to some right-wing blogs, one need not go comment trawling to find commentary equally deserving of contempt and ridicule.

More from Glenn, The Gun Toting Liberal, Michael J.W. Stickings, and Ron Chusid.