Chris Parry of The Vancouver Sun highlighted some of the comments on the mainstream, hard right-wing blog/news aggregator Free Republic. Among them, a picture of Michelle talking to Malia Obama with the caption: "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds." Classy. These mouthbreathing, borderline morons then kept piled on:

"A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion. "Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?" wrote one commenter.
"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps," wrote another. Such was the onslaught of derision on the site that the person who originally complained about the slurs, a Kristin N., claims only one comment in the first hundred posted actually criticized the remarks as inappropriate.

FreeRepublic claims to be a site that "does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government." Yet, the thread went down, and back up with the original comments in tact, and then some, notes Chris Parry, the story's writer. Parry was careful and kind enough to - maybe unnecessarily - note the few reasonable voices in the crowd who were conservative, on Free Republic, and not racist. But there're always going to be a few exceptions to the rule, which, as far as you should be concerned, are absolute swamp creatures. Pardon any political incorrectness, but I think you'll agree if you happen to go over and dip your toe in what's mostly a bog of contagiously slimy invective and general retardation.

It gets worse, though. Chris Parry, it appears, has advocated on his Daily Kos blog any number of egregious offenses, among them: posting hate speech on sites like Free Republic and blaming it on conservatives. Parry posted under the name "hollywoodoz" on Daily Kos, where his signature was "Fool me once, I'll punch you in the fucking head." Parry outed himself as hollywoodoz here, where he discloses the company he helped start. In essence: Parry, the journalist, found his story right where he'd been circling it for a very long time, and reported it as news. Sigh.

Bottom line: Parry's noble intentions are paving him a road to hell, by taking the same one the slimeball majority at Free Republic employs. They're probably going to cheer a "mainstream," centrist blog pointing out the offenses of a liberal reporter trying to expose hate speech, but they shouldn't get it mixed up. A quick glance at Free Republic and you'll probably see the same thing I did: some of the most egregious examples that lend credence to the idea that some people just shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard, or to open their mouths, no matter what their political affiliation. Or, as some would have it: STFU.

Conservative Free Republic blog in free speech flap after racial slurs directed at Obama children [Vancouver Sun]

Update: Since this post was penned, we heard from Chris Parry. "You accuse me of advocating the planting of hate speech on right wing websites, but you don't link to any such thing, and I'm unaware of having ever said such a comment in my many years at dKos. If you could point me to any evidence of same, I'd appreciate it. If you can't, can I ask you add a note stating as much?" The off-putting issue was Parry's signature, and the acronyms he posted at DailyKos. Both of these places can be rabbit holes of liberal/conservative baiting, and Parry - a journalist at a newspaper - clearly had something against the posters at Free Republic from the get-go (rightfully so, I should add: they're generally terrible people, as evidenced by what I've seen). These were first indicators that something was arguably off: someone employed in a traditional news outlet who also was a commenter on a far-left liberal blog. The acronyms - however facetious, which is the context I've now seen after spending time in said rabbit hole - were a (mild) advocacy, in my eyes: the "truth to every joke" idiom goes in, here. That being said, there's nothing to prove he actually planted anything. The headline was the only inaccurate part of this post, and it's now been changed from Hate Speech Against Malia Obama On Conservative Blogs Reported By Hate Speech Planting Journalist to Hate Speech Against Malia Obama On Conservative Blogs. Because, at the end of the day, who reported it isn't nearly as interesting as what's being reported, and the trend it's evidence of: respectively, a bunch of racist mouthbreathers calling this little girl a whore, and whatever the opposite of human evolution is.

Max Blumenthal, the filmmaker who took the video, contributed to The Huffington Post previous to this, so it's not a one-off thing, nor a user-submitted video (like the Euna Ling issue at Current TV). He's a contributor. And he notes of his experience:

Within a few hours, I received an email from a Huffington Post administrator informing me he had scrubbed my video from the site. "I don't see that it has any real news value," the administrator told me. "For me it only proves that one can find drunk people willing to say just about anything. Especially drunk, moronic people." For the first time, the premier clearinghouse for online news and opinions had suppressed one of my posts.

...Bringing new meaning to the word "clearinghouse," certainly. Any request for comment has had us referred to Blumenthal's post on Phillip Weiss's blog regarding the fiasco, something it now officially is.

Much of the outrage over the video - which we've re-posted below - falls in line with what The Huffington Post issued: that the guys in the video are drunk, that the video could be a crafted political set-up used to further an agenda, that the entire thing is too outrage-provoking to consider as anything but outright propaganda. That's ridiculous, especially for The Huffington Post, though.

Even though they're mostly just used to aggregating the news of others (or as 30 Rock so nicely put it: telling us what we already know), they're a news site, and this is news, and it's their job to - at the very least - provide some kind of context for this kind of thing. The video's clearly not fake or staged in any regard: why would these very clear faces expose themselves to the world like that? It's the worst kind of "viral" there is. And yes, they're drunk, but as we all well know by now, being drunk doesn't necessarily invalidate the kinds of things you say when you're trashed. Sometimes, in fact: the opposite.

If anything, The Huffington Post's deletion of the video looks like a political maneuver on their part. Maybe they just don't want to be a part of something so hot-button as this, or don't want to chance it on any of the risk that this story may or may not hold. Or it could be agenda-based.

It's probably none of those things. It's probably the equivalent of some tight-assed S & P person over there who thinks they're taking the initiative with their job. What we want to know: Who is this person censoring things over at the Huffington Post? And what would Ariana think?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Censored by the Huffington Post and Imprisoned By The Past [Mondoweiss]