Little Saigon Fight Gets Ugly
4:11 PM - Link to this article.
Go First Amendment! Hooray for the sanctity of free speech and of the press!
Okay. Got that out of the way. Now, I gotta say: the Mercury News should shut down the comments on their two most recent Molina stories - about Chuck's lame fundraising efforts and the interruption of a planning meeting by protestors.
Sprinkled throughout the comments are some good questions and interesting points, but the vast majority are virulently offensive and racist, contributing nothing to the quality of conversation on the issues and simply spreading dissent and hate.
See for yourself - here are, as of writing this, PDFs of the comments from the first and second articles. The most repugnant comments aren't worth excerpts, but they run the gamut of offensiveness. Think of a slur - even money says it's in there.
There is no question that the Merc is aware of the flow of the comments, which are publicly visible (and would be even if Pete Constant's precious filters were in place). Discussion of this sort, such as it is, is fine, tucked in some back, dingy, racist corner of the internet. But sponsored and sanctioned by the City's only newspaper? Why is this comment thread still up?
Simple. The pages they're on are showing a lot of ads to a lot of people. There's a good lesson in the merits of capitalism right there.
Labels: The Mercury News
1 Comments:
You are right. The left-over 60s crowd that is driving the Merc into the ground has finally unveiled its hostility to every act by the Vietnamese-American community. The word "racist" is a harsh one to apply to the Merc writers, but they certainly have all the indicia pointing in that direction including the basest evidence possible, a tone in today's editorial preaching that compliance with conventional wisdom will avoid political harm to the Vietnamese-American community itself. Whether you want to call that intimidation of wanna-be political leaders or merely thoughtless, patronizing advice, it is remarkable evidence of national origin bigotry at the Merc.
Post a Comment
<< Home