“Comeon you bigot — how about another comment about the Courant foisting its “extreme liberal agenda” on us?

This story is evidence your claims about the Courant are a lie.

You are a lying bigot Shoreliner — a lying, low-down, dirty bigot.”

“Peter Wolfgang is the anti-Christ. He is the most hateful person I have ever met.”

These are some examples of what religious people might call hate speech, attributed by name to commenters on the Courant’s new and improved Topix board. I just think the issue is kind of a distraction to more egregious forms of racism, bad media, etc. that the mayor and others could concentrate on.

Sorry, don’t agree 100% with you on this!…

We went to Monte Alban for dinner and then drove up Capitol Ave. to Main St. and we weren’t sure if the event was canceled, there seem to be little traffic (around 7pm). Maybe a bit fewer people this year than last, probably because of the weather. It want nice coming back into the city from way up here near Willimantic. I get to see what new places opened and which ones closed. I saw that HartBeat Ensemble is doing their plays in the park again. That’s cool.

Yes, he’s not perfect, he’s a politician. And when he shows up to a rally, whether it’s in front of a hotel, or in front of the Courant, or in support of the Jena 6, he’s got one thing in mind: his own career. That’s what politicians do. Not once have I ever encountered a politician that made me re-consider that opinion. I hope my bud Luis Cotto proves me wrong, but the system tends to do an extremely effective job of either corrupting or ejecting anybody that gets elected with the intention of changing things.

I don’t think anyone is ignoring the larger point of your comment, but you seem to be saying that because racism is everywhere it’s silly to actually expect anyone to do anything about it anywhere.

Your comments - the content of which appear to me to be 100% factually true - remind me of the feminist legal scholar Catherine McKinnon. McKinnon wrote eloquently about the subjugation of women and the extent to which legal commentators ignored the everyday violence that women suffer at the hands of men. The conclusion that she reached as a result of her analysis was that because all interactions between men and women are characterized by male dominance and male violence, therefore all sexual intercourse between men and women was rape.

The most powerful rebuke to her position came not from outraged male legal scholars (though many certainly were outraged) but from women who worked in rape crisis counseling. Their response to McKinnon was that her conclusion minimized the reality of sexual assault by taking a broad spectrum of actions and giving them all the same name. This ignored the real differences between everyday acts of male dominance and crimes of violence.

It is true that many of the people that write letters to the editors or op-eds in the Courant say things that reflect racist and white supremacist attitudes and assumptions. But that it not the same as posting a comment in an anonymous online forum saying “How do you fix Hartford’s problems? Drop an atom bomb on the north end,” or “Hartford’s problems get worse the darker it becomes.”

These statements aren’t just incredibly offensive and insulting, but are the kinds of statements that will make many people reluctant to even participate in a discussion because of the level of hatred and outright bigotry that they reflect.

It was and is appropriate to challenge and oppose the editorial practices that permit this sort of verbal cross-burning to dominate online discussions at the Courant. The fact that those that spoke out did not also condemn every reporter and editorial writer at the Courant in the same breath does not invalidate their criticisms.

It’s not just the blog commenters who are the problem at the Courant. It’s the editorial staff, the people who endorse Joe Lieberman and George Bush, the stories they green light that exploit Hartford’s people for a profit, that provide a context for racist comments. The blog is simply a new medium. It’s the same prejudice it’s always been.

He’s a politician. And politics is about power. So community organizers will always have to organize to get what we want from them.

But I was surprised to see him there at the Hotel and Restaurant workers picket line and then speaking out–jeopardizing his relationship with Travelors. I didn’t see any other politicians there. I haven’t seen that in a lot of the Hartford mayors in the past.

Clearly he’s not perfect, but his life history and the work he’s done brought him out to support minimum wage workers against a multinational corporation. And that is worthy of praise in my mind.

The defense of unregistered forums like the one currently used has typically been that it encourages speech. I think that’s turned upside down. A public forum that addresses controversial issues needs to not only be “free” but also safe . . . a place where voices that are often not heard can express opinions without being subjected to vicious attacks, or where racist and sexist codewords and stereotypes are not used to shove people out the door.