Free Republic

admin said: “They where not ‘approved by mods, removed, then reinstated’. The accounts had reached the threshold where the posts didn’t need approval to post. They posted them, as soon as they where caught, they where removed as any racist post would be. They where only restored for a short period when KOS started throwing a fit, not because they where acceptable comments, but we wanted to show how most of the site attacked racist posts and called them out as unacceptable.”

Hmm, okay, I’ll take that as an official statement on the issue and add it to the piece when I get into the office.

Smacks a little of an after-the-fact excuse, especially seeing as how many there were, but I’ll give you the column inches to have your say, fair being fair.

And now, off to work. Thanks for reading, folks, and if you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them at cparry@vancouversun.com

Jokyfo says: “Why don’t you write a piece in your own paper, (before they dump you) admitting the statements you made and letting everyone see them?”

It’s something I’m considering. A follow-up piece about how you guys howled about the “invasion of privacy” of Jeff Gannon when it was revealed he was a gay prostitute while sitting in the White House press gallery, then do the exact same thing when someone writes something you don’t like, complete with a mea culpa about how I’ve said some dumb things in my time?

Sure. It’s an option.

Badass said: “Why is it necessary to keep saying you don’t remember doing it?”

Because I don’t recall the context of one post out of some several thousand over six years. Maybe I was having a really bad day. Maybe it was 3am and I’d been out all night.

Dunno. Can’t say. But it wasn’t cool.

Hi Mnehring,

I’m sorry, but that story doesn’t compute. The note posted by Jim made no mention of sneaky goings on. He just said leave the kids alone.

Which is pretty good advice, isn’t it? I mean, all of you who want me to go die somewhere or something, do you disassociate yourself from the remarks? Would you call them racist? Do you think they’re a stain on the name of the site?

Because, really, that’s all I wanted to hear and the story become moot.

But you guys keep coming, as if you’re defending the posts, by pointing to anything you can find that I’ve ever written that might have been off-colour.

Let’s be clear, I’m no saint. But I didn’t call the 11-year-old daughter of the Commander in Chief a whore. Freepers did that.

Hoosier said: “That is a false statement...There were individual comments removed and then the entire thread was removed....The person who gave you this information is covering up their own involvement.”

Hi Hoosier,
Sorry, but you’re wrong. When the thread was reinstated, Jim added a post saying the complainer is right and the kids should be off-limits because it’s not their fault their father is a “leftist marxist pig.”
Yes, it was ultimately removed, but only after it became a feeding frenzy on a host of other blogs.

DJ: Oh, allow me to make it clear, I take nothing back about Sarah Palin.

At the time there was much conjecture about her pregnancy, if you recall, and I honestly believed that those questions should be addressed.

Same as you guys do about Obama’s birth certificate. Keep asking the question and it will eventually be addressed.

Do I think Palin was covering for the pregnancy of her daughter? Probably not. But in the heat of an election, the question was a fair one to ask, and that’s what my post said, clearly.

Haskai asked:

“In what world is saying you wanna bash in the head of the former first lady considered “silliness””

Agreed. It’s more stupidity. I’m man enough to put my hand up and say as much.

There’s been a lot of spurious stuff leveled at me in this little adventure, but that one caused me to sit up in my seat and say to myself, “I posted that?”

I don’t remember doing it, but I clearly did. I’m no Laura Bush fan but that was way out of line. Nobody deserves that sort of stuff tossed their way, even in anonymous internetville.

Hi dirtboy.

“Ah, so for a couple of freepers to pop off with off-color comments is grounds for an article attacking FR (when the mods would have pulled the comments in question had they seen them). But for you, you could make far worse comments in your past and you just up and absolve yourself.”

Again, it wasn’t that the comments were made. It’s that they were approved by mods, removed, then reinstated after review.

For what it’s worth, the comments above, which I made some years ago, should also have been removed on dKos. I’m surprised they weren’t, but with the sheer number of posts over there, I guess sometimes ridiculousness slips through.

(cue freeper laughter)

DJ asks why attack right wing sites and not leftys.

Fair question, man. I’ve said before here that what made my story news, to me, wasn’t that racist things were said. It’s that the remarks were at first approved by moderators, then removed, and then reinstated. That, to me, says management stood behind them. Twice.

That’s a story.

“Anonymous person on blog makes nasty comment” is no story, as it happens to every site, political or not.

Now, if you guys had said, “Yeah, fair cop, we should have kept them down” or “those comments were uncool, they should never have been approved in the first place,” then my story fades into nothingness.

Instead of that, you guys keep saying “but other people do it too”, which is no defense.

Regardless of my political tilt, I didn’t write the story to “go after” Free Republic. I wrote it because it was news. And if you check the response on Twitter, it seems a TON of people agreed.

Now, have I been a good boy every second I’ve spent on the internet since 1994? Heck no. I’ve said some dumb things in my time, back when I was in my early 20’s and never thinking about what might happen ten years down the line.

But that doesn’t change the story at all. Free Republic did wrong. Instead of trying to justify it, and attack the guy that shone a light on it, why not just own it and move on?

Bottom line is this: You guys can keep emailing my bosses, but if you looked on the Sun website yesterday night, you would have seen the story in question had not been removed - in fact, it had been selected as one of the four “editor’s picks” on the site.

The story was accurate. Own it.

Hi Mnehring.

It’s not a case of guilt by association at all. In the story, I made mention that some people had said such comments shouldn’t be on the site.

Again, it’s not about the general population. Nor is it about the inappropriate remarks. It’s about the site owners taking them down, then reinstating them and mocking someone who complained.

The same way “all Kossacks” aren’t evil hatemongers, nor are “all Freepers”. If I didn’t make that clear enough in the piece, I apologize.

Oh, by the way, The Province is an entirely separate newspaper. Contacting them about this won’t do much to help your cause. Nor will contacting advertising, sales, finance, reader services or community investment.

Publisher and editor-in-chief are your go-to guys, if you must.

That’s it?

Seriously?

Allow me to state, without any hesitation, that those remarks, made anonymously on the internet many years ago, before I was anywhere near the newspaper industry, were inappropriate and distasteful.

After a decade and a half online, I’m not surprised I had the occasional moment of silliness left behind me. It happens.

You live, you learn. Moving on.

Is this going to be another batch like yesterday, where you take interest-free loans I made to a third world charity and called it ‘loan-sharking’, and a haiku attacking Bush/Cheney/Brown for not helping African Americans after Hurricane Katrina and call it an “incitement to attack black people”? Or when you found a post where I pilloried Joe Biden for his bankruptcy bill and said he “has to go” (meaning he needed to be primaried) and decided I was calling for his assassination?

Because, really, that was lame. Almost as lame as the accusation I created some 80 or so fake email addresses to create 80 or so fake FR accounts to post 80 or pieces of racism so I could write a story about it.

I mean, seriously guys, hate me for being a liberal all you like. But just making stuff up out of whole cloth is a little silly.

Maybe just stop calling 11-year-old daughters of the Commander in Chief “whore” and you wouldn’t have to worry about guys like me. Ya know?

Badrotofinger emailed and asked me to confirm my identity. I did. he then asked me to post as such here. I did.

Thanks.

No relation to Malcolm Parry. Just fortunate to share a good name.

Posting on my day off, so no, not being paid to post here.

Alrighty, I think I’ve devoted enough time to you guys and answered enough questions now. I’ve ignored the abuse and laughed at the conspiracy theories, but I’ve got other things to do today.

I’ll be happy to answer any other questions at cparry@vancouversun.com, and feel free to crawl the Sun site looking for anything else you might enjoy.

It’s been a banner day traffic-wise on the site, and for that I thank you.

Remember, just because you don’t like the news doesn’t mean it’s untrue.

Re: previous handles, it was years ago. Might have even been Bush’s first term. I’d be lying if I said I had a clue what names were used, but there were two and I think I got off maybe one comment on either before being lib-banned.

In my original piece I mentioned all the nicknames, but when I gave it a look over, the names made it drag. They were repetitive, and they didn’t help the flow of a piece I already thought, if I’m honest, was a little stuttered.

Hope that helps.

By ‘posting’ I’m referring to posting a diary.

Commenting? Yeah, I still do that sometimes over there.

Yes, of course I’m responding. Isn’t that what you want me to do?

I’m answering questions openly and honestly. If you’d prefer I just leave you with questions, I have other things I could be doing.