Enuf of that Backtalk…
Following up on Angry in the Great White North’s observation that Macleans threw Andre Potter’s diatribe about Mike Duffy’s use of the Dion flubs calling Duffy Mike Duffy a “despicable human being” down the memory hole – ie. deleted it. I note that comments are closed on all Potter’s posts.
Wussy!
Potter was perfectly entitled to call out CTV for breaking its word to M.Dion. And various people are perfectly entitled to tell Potter he is full of shit. That would be free speech and an open debate. Deep sixing the post and closing comments until it all blows over suggests that Macleans is just a tiny bit hypocritical on the free speech front.
Potter is a big boy, he can defend himself against the rabble. Let him.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am
The post was surely an embarrassment to Maclean’s. I’d have deleted it, too.
Surely freedom of speech includes the right to wipe ugly posts off of your own web site.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Baby…...
October 17th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Pulling a stunt like that pretty much ensures that he will eventually be piled on whenever he opens comments again.
And it will be an issue as long as he “blogs”.
Blogs that don’t allow comments don’t usually tend to do as well do they? (I don’t know, never run a blog) I mean, even WK allows comments now.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I loved that post! It so perfectly encapsulated the stupidity of Potter and Co. Guess he’s in Coyne’s dog house now. Wonder how long before they him run with the big dogs again?
October 18th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Actually, it’s not such a stark contradiction of their own position. Mcleans’ issue has always been that they and they alone have control over what they publish. Remember, the whole thing started when the sock puppet students wanted equal space to publish a rebuttal to Steyn’s article and they got all huffy when Mcleans told them to piss off.
October 19th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Mike Duffy is a despicable human being. And so, it seems, are the editors at Maclean’s.
Thanks for this tip, Jay. If I had any time for Potter (whose views of bloggers, sans himself of course, I had a go at over at my place), I’d be tempted to post something about this. It seems that the Maclean’s folks are just like the CBC wusses in the Mallick affair—keep everything grey, with a tapioca consistency, and pander to every shrieking blowhard who makes a complaint.
October 19th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Aw, heck, I went ahead anyway.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Your freedom of speech to comment on this issue does not extend to using Maclean’s website to do so any more than random Muslims have the right to pick cover art for an issue of the magazine.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Nick, of course Macleans has a perfect right to deep six really dumb posts and nix comments on all or any of its site….but I still have a perfect right to call them wussies for doing so.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
This reminds me of a line from Fletch:
“I’d like a cup of hot fat and the head of Diego Garcia.”