finn and McG can be glimpsed high above rustling through the forest as walter, cyclo, blatham and Burt Reynolds canoe the river below.
In a last, likely futile, effort to dimish black/white high stupidhood...
First, I wrote "Bushofascists" to encourage okie to get a bit of a clue that his "Clintonistas" is neither sharp nor funny nor revelatory nor interesting. "Poopy-pants" would do as well. And the silly sentence it sits in was a mirror reflection of his silly sentence.
Quote: AT&T says its monitor did so by mistake -- what a strangely precise and politically convenient mistake! (Who could they possibly be referring to?)
As the writer surmised, and as AT and T has now acknowledged, the "offensive" or "inappropriate" remarks re the president WERE purposefully deleted by content monitors. It wasn't, in other words, a chance mistake. It was censorship of political speech critical of Bush.
Then there is that McG bit in blue, which is really just a repeat of the suggestion in his earlier posts (along with finn's concrete-cranium post) that the writer (and I) have the "who" as Bushies. As cyclo and walter attempted to point out, that implication is not explicit nor implicit in what the writer said nor in what I said.
The exact set of motives and or directives which led to this censorship of political speech are not clear. We don't know if the AT and T spokesman is now speaking truthfully or not. Initially, he/she was not. We don't know what was in the noggins of these "monitors" nor what instructions they were operating under. I didn't imply answers to these unknowns nor did the writer.
All that we pointed to was the FACT of censorship of political speech critical of the president. However this fact comes to be, it is clearly antipathetic to open, democratic governance and constitutional liberties. Censoring "inappropriate sexuality" or censoring violence in broadcasts is one matter, open to reasoned argument. Censoring political speech because it is critical of those in power has no justification in a free, non-authoritarian state.
It is entirely possible that a similar decision might be made under a Dem president. If so, it would be no less authoritarian and contrary to constitutional and liberty principles. It is the fact of such censorship which is of primary importance even if there is a compelling argument to be made that this particular adminstration is uniquely egregious in its minimal respect for open speech and an informed citizenry.
