A string of anti-Semitic rants about Sen. Joe Lieberman have popped up on the liberal MoveOn.org's open forum Web site, drawing criticism from the Anti-Defamation League. It's the latest flap in the contentious race between Lieberman, who is running as an independent to keep his seat in Connecticut, and upstart Ned Lamont, the Democratic nominee. | “Foxman cited examples from the site's Action Forum, including 'media owning Jewish pigs,' 'Zionazis,' a reference to the senator as 'Jew Lieberman' and the question, 'Why are the Jews so Jew-y?' ” |
Foxman wrote, "Those who allow hate to rear its ugly head under their auspices bear a special responsibility to distance themselves from that hate, and to speak out against it, as loudly as possible."
| “He added that most of the comments were not made by MoveOn members and suggested it could be an effort by conservatives to "target" the group...” |
He added that most of the comments were not made by MoveOn members and suggested it could be an effort by conservatives to "target" the group, and said any effort to tie the rants to MoveOn was "wrong."
| Interesting defense. It was those nasty Publicans, trying to make MoveOn.org look bad. But we get anti-Semitic rants here every now and then, and we get visits by DU and MoveOn agents provocateurs. The ones the mods find too offensive get moved to the sinktrap, where they're retained for all the world to see, assuming all the world has an interest. I could build a sinktrap for MoveOn.org, if they gave me a certain amount of hard currency — no yuan, escudos, or dinars, thank you. Much more to the point, though, is the fact that the MoveOn regulars don't seem to have gotten into a very high dudgeon about the posts. I'm actually the slowest of the mods to move something to the sinktrap, because I like to give the regulars the opportunity to play with the nasty comments. Having a chew toy is good for the intellectual jaws, preventing the buildup of scale between the lobes of the brain. If someone commented at Rantburg asking "why are Jews so Jew-y" they'd be snark fodder for an entire day and the thread would probably top 100 comments. So my guess would be that, whether the posts came from MoveOn regulars, casual visitors, or insidious Rovian operatives, the response was the important thing, not so much the posts themselves. And the response, or the lack thereof, reveals much about the MoveOn people. |