More censorship hypocrisy

This entry is about a manufactured story pumped up by the likes of terrorist website Free Republic and right-wing scumbag rags like the Washington Times. It barely even deserves to be dignified with a response, but the hypocrisy is so overpowering that I can't help but replying to this gallery of dumb losers. The "Censorship Alert!" sign refers not to the censorship they claim they've suffered, but to the real censorship they've shrugged off.

I don't wish to defend any candidate in the cult-like two-party system these days, but exposing their opponents' hypocrisy is a different matter. Lately, at least 7 nearly identical anti-Obama blogs of the rightist strain have sprouted up. All 7 are linked to the same website (which looks like a poor DLC mash-up). Criticizing a candidate is protected from government censorship, of course. But a blogging service owned by a private company - in this case, Google - doesn't have to allow spam blogs - which is precisely what these were.

When the service's software detected that the blogs were almost alike, it barred the bloggers from making new entries until it could be confirmed that they weren't spamming.

Naturally, the right-wing bloggers went off half-cocked and claimed they were victims of government censorship based on their politics. For one thing, this wasn't government censorship, because the blogging service was run by a private company. For another, the blockage of their ability to post was prompted by their spamming that was detected by software.

In other words, this conservative death match between right-wing bloggers and the right-leaning corporate world is over nothing.

If the bloggers didn't know their spamming was against the rules, they must be total imbeciles. So I think they purposely set themselves up for trouble just so they'd have an excuse to accuse opponents of censorship.

I may have written this story off as sore loser ravings, except that conservatives who are rushing to the bloggers' defense think different rules apply to dissenters from their order.

They complain that Google supports 'Net neutrality but violated 'Net neutrality by cracking down on the spam blogs. That's not what the 'Net neutrality rules mean, brainiacs. The rules mean ISP's can't favor certain types of data. It doesn't mean blogging services can't block spam.

Where were the Freepers when I had a message board completely deleted by another company because I criticized Bush's FCC appointees? Where were the Timesies when my account was revoked on another website when I condemned the FCC's raid of Tantrum 95.7? They sure didn't rush to my defense on free speech grounds.

Or what about when my postings of The Last Word were deleted even though they were in a public venue funded by taxpayers? These were called "spam" even when they were posted just once and in only one place. What about at the start of the Iraq War when I had to get an account on a German server because my posts from my American account were being blocked?

What about the Air Force's policy of blocking blogs?

Why are these acts not considered censorship even though some of them occurred on government-sponsored media?

This isn't just a double standard but a complete reversal of the facts: Real acts of political censorship are glossed over, while acts that aren't political censorship at all are called just that.

The rightist pastime of manufacturing stories results from their own inability to win on the basis of their ideas. Their policies are failures, so they resort to setting themselves up for trouble so they can manufacture a cause. Just like that Republican operative in West Virginia who kept going to Democratic rallies and claiming he was attacked.