I understand that Lefty Blogs has delisted Howling Latina. And other supposedly Democratic blogs are dropping the site from their blogrolls. The reason? Howling Latina is a proud advocate of PUMA. She dares to be a dissenting voice.
I thought the Democratic Party was a big tent. Have we gotten so out of whack that we only want to hear from the people we agree with? Heck, if that were the case, I’d be removing a pile of blogs from my blogroll – and don’t assume that the list would only be Republican ones.
When we start down the path of censoring the voices within our party, there is little that separates us from the Republicans. If your sensibilities are offended by those with whom you disagree, there is a simple answer: don’t read them.
Individual blog operators have the right to do whatever they want with their blogrolls. But I disagree with the decision by Lefty Blogs to remove Howling Latina because to do so, is an attempt to silence someone. (And we’ve seen plenty of that over at Blogger.)
It’s just not right. And because it’s my blog, I’ll continue to keep Howling Latina listed.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I never said I was okay with HL being taken down because she says things people don’t agree with. I meant it was predictable that as insulting and objectionable as she has been behaving in the past few months I can’t condemn the decision. She was determined to incur just such a response. That much was obvious from her relentlessly negative attacks on Obama AND his supporters over the past few months. She wasn’t merely expressing differences of opinion, but was reprinting anti-Obama screeds lifted directly from right wing blogs and commentaries, was taking snippets of information and drawing the most negative connotations about Obama and Obama supporters she could find, was extremely insulting to Obama supporters, adopting right wing terms like “Obamatrons”, “Obamaniacs”, etc. She was insulting and disrespectful toward anyone who disagreed with her.
If it were the government which de-listed her I’d be up in arms in a heartbeat, but that’s not the case. It was other people, all self-described progressives or Democrats or liberals, who were saying that enough was enough. In other words, they decided she crossed a line.
I asked whether there was a line. I never said there’s a firm, immutable line, but that a line may be justified under some circumstances. So my question for you is – is there a line? And if it isn’t this, then what is it?
Yes they have. And how many of them have been shunned?
My line isn’t the same as your line, someone else’s line is different than both of ours. So your question has no answer.
I fixed the blockquote on your post. And that last sentence you quoted wasn’t directed at you, it was directed at everyone who felt that way (thus the reference to “y’all” )
MB @ 5:13 I didn’t say Mark Brooks was pompous and judgmental….I said his WORDS were. May I quote his words: “Bottom line? She is not progressive…” I believe that’s a judgment, isn’t it?
Where was the outrage when Senator Clinton’s anatomy, family, etc., was villified and slewn all over the internet and media? This lack of tolerance for another’s opinion (HL’s) to the extent that her blog will be removed from LeftyBlogs is really just FEAR of another’s opinion. It shows weakness and unsuredness.
Again, Vivian, you are the true big-tent Democrat and an excellent defender of the Democratic Party’s principles.
Please show me a Leftyblogs blog that was involved in this:
“Where was the outrage when Senator Clinton’s anatomy, family, etc., was villified and slewn all over the internet and media?”
I criticized certain aspects of Clinton’s record, but never attacked her gender or her “anatomy.”
Please show me another Leftyblogs blog that has behaved anything like Howling Latina.
Howling Latina’s cartoon is not merely tasteless, it feeds an age old stereotype of the sexually depraved black man. Southern politicians have promoted this stereotype to great affect for over a century. As late as 2006, the GOP ran commercials targeting Harold Ford, suggesting that he was lusting after white women. The Connecticut blue blood George HW Bush, enlisted his Confederate pit bull Lee Atwater, to develop the Willie Horton campaign, which famously suggested that Michael Dukakis would unleash the black rapists of white women, on society at large. Howling Latina’s cartoon resurrects the nasty stereotype of a black man who has uncontrollable, twisted sexual urges. If you don’t understand the history of this genre of political demagoguery and think that I am simply overreacting, go to some of the black blogs and you’ll see that people are outraged by Howling Latina’s cartoon. She can hate Obama all she wants. But to promote this sort of racist nonsense out of reflexive anger and frustration, most assuredly calls into question her “progressive” philosophy.
Vivian,
This has to be some kind of record for your site. Congrats on sparking an interesting and useful debate.
Vivian, you know I’ve always supported free speech. I’ve defended some people who hold views mighty unpopular with the left. But there is a difference between censorship, which is the government or other entity silencing somebody, and the exercise of editorial discretion.
BTW, I don’t think it’s only the government that can practice censorship. If I come to your house in the middle of the night and threaten or harm you for your views, even if I’m a private individual, I am censoring you. I am silencing you through intimidation.
If somebody was to do that, I would fight it with every ounce of my being.
But using judgment on who I list or delist from my blogroll is my right. I have many, many blogs listed that I disagree with. And I have cordial relations with and like many of those on my blogroll. I delight in our differences. But I took Howling Latina off my blogroll a long time ago, before this whole tempest. It’s not because she is a PUMA. Although I’m not one, I can sympathize – I was a Hillary supporter.
But increasingly, I disliked her tone, her lack of respect for others, and her general nastiness. That cartoon of Obama, which everybody is referring to, probably was the final straw for a lot of people. It was racist and vicious. She was already off my blogroll but if she hadn’t been, I’d have taken her off it then.
Again, that’s just my editorial judgment. You are free to disagree with it. Just as you are free to disagree with the judgment of Lefty Blogs. But they had a right to make their decision. I don’t think it had anything to do with what she said, but with the increasingly shrill and disrespectful way she says it. Again, they have the right to editorial discretion. We all do. That’s not the same as silencing somebody for their views or making the tent smaller.
I wish I could live in TripLBee’s world where people don’t know that 99% of the world’s men have masturbated furiously in the bathroom at some point in their lives, regardless of race, religion, socio-economic background, marital status or sexual orientation. Come on. Just because the man’s black doesn’t mean that everything negative about him is feeding into a racial stereotype.
As long as we’re on the topic, while there was a racial component to the ad you referenced in Tennessee, most people outside the Volunteer State aren’t aware that Ford’s problem with the ad wasn’t that it implied that he sleeps around with a lot of younger white women; his problem was that he actually *does* sleep around with a lot of younger women (of all races), enough so that thousands of people knew about it before the ad even hit.
I wish I could live in a sanitized world where the hit job on Harold Ford was really more about the fact that he was a bachelor than about feeding the fear that he would unleash a lusting army of black men on the virtuous white women of Tennessee. I wish I could live in a world where I was so unaware of racial stereotyping that the Obama cartoon was a pleasant reminder of the fact that men masturbate, and not a subtle (or not so subtle) attempt to remind fence sitting white voters that Obama is as sexually depraved as most black men. What a nice world that would be.
I have to agree with TripLBee about the Harold Ford ads being racist. My husband’s from Tennessee and very proud of it. But he found the ads offensive.
Harold Ford is a bachelor. His private life really should have been off limits. He broke no wedding vows. Was not untrustworthy. I’m pretty sure lots of Republicans aren’t virgins when they are single.
The ad was about race and interracial dating. Likewise, the portrayl of Obama was racist and disgusting to boot.
Yeah. We’re about…what, six weeks? away from people saying that the implication that Obama may not be strong on foreign policy credentials only feeds into the stereotype that black people don’t understand the complexities behind the tenuous relationship between human rights and globalization viz. Sino-American trade relations. Why waste time refuting the message behind the cartoon that Sean Holihan concisely and correctly identified — that Barack Obama is in love with himself, the GOP’s message du jour — when we can simply ignore the debate and label it racist.
Vivian,
While I respect your opinion, I would like to point out a few things you said two years ago with regards to Waldo removing a blog from his aggregator:
On Waldo’s site:
“‘No one has been censored. Rather, they have been denied access to a site which you created, you maintain and you, ultimately, control. They are still free to post whatever they like, as often as they like on their own sites. If that is the definition of censorship, then I need a new dictionary.’
That would make two of us that would need a new dictionary, Norm.”
On your site:
“As the result, Waldo removed the blog from the aggregator. I wholeheartedly support his decision. Contrary to the postings of some others, this isn’t about censorship. This is about common decency. The exact same decency that keeps out of the blogsphere profanity-laden posts. The image was profane.
I would take it step further and say that Waldo, who has graciously hosted Virginia Political Blogs on his servers at no charge to the rest of us, should enact a code of sorts that prohibits anyone from participating in the aggregator who does not agree with the rules of basic decency.”
Just a little perspective.
Similarly, it is one thing to block a commenter because you disagree with his opinions, and another to block him because of profanity. I think it is profane to show a cartoon depicting anyone, especially a presumptive presidential candidate, masturbating. The idea could have been better conferred showing Obama kneeling over a pond and falling in love with his own reflection. (Of course, this may assume too great a knowledge of Greek Mythology, but we can hope.)
“Go to some of the black blogs and you’ll see that people are outraged by Howling Latina’s cartoon.”
I don’t doubt it. But I have to ask, is Vivian not “black enough?”