Comments Turned Off at Washington Post Blog

Apparently the readers of the Washington Post can't handle the truth. They've been fed a party line so long they feel betrayed when "their paper" criticizes the Democrats.

The Washington Post shut down one of its blogs Thursday after the newspaper's ombudsman raised the ire of readers by writing that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to the Democrats as well as to Republicans.

In her Sunday column, ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties," prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog.

There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's staff could not "keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff," and so the Post shut down comments on the blog, or Web log, said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.

Emphasis mine

Dissent in the blue states is not nice, reasoned or tolerant. Following is from the post.blog on the subject.

As of 4:15 p.m. ET today, we have shut off comments on this blog indefinitely.

At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues. Among the things that we knew would be part of that discussion would be the news and opinion coming from the pages of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com. We knew a lot of that discussion would be critical in nature. And we were fine with that. Great journalism companies need feedback from readers to stay sharp

But 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. It's a shame that it's come to this. Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about.

We removed hundreds of these posts over the past few days, and it was becoming a significant burden on us to try and keep the comments area free of profanity and name-calling

It couldn't be possible there are too many kooks on the left? This is the reason the Dems looked so bad at the Alito hearings, there are no reasonable people left, they want to through out Senator Joe Lieberman because he is not consumed with hatred for the Republicans.

Witness the imploding of the American left.

WaPo Lies has the deleted commentsH/T Koconut Pundits

Basil's has links

others on this subject:

A Scrivener's Lament is lamenting the Post's decision calling their reasons LIES!
The Lone Elm says "Welcome to the real world" WaPo
Barking Moonbat Early Warning System calls them Liberal Jerks
A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT the WAPO ANSWERS QUESTION POSED BY ANN COULTER
The Coalition of the Swilling figures Their SPAM Filters Weren't Working
Blogma asks Can newspapers handle the truth?