# Posted 2:12 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

CONSERVATIVES DEFENDING THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA FROM LIBERAL ATTACKS? I guess anything can happen in the blogosphere. In case you haven't heard, the Washington Post took down the comments section on post.blog because

There are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being. It's a shame that it's come to this.

Unexpectedly, conservatives are lining up to support the Post's decision while liberals are denouncing it as a cover-up of the Post's pandering to Republicans. Come again? Well, let's start with some background.

WaPo ombudsman Deborah Howell provoked an avalanche of comments at post.blog by writing that Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans. Howell then corrected herself by saying that Abramoff directed his clients to donate considerable sums to 88 Democrats. Abramoff himself only donated to Republicans.

Is that a good description of the facts? I'm not sure yet. I'm still just ankle-deep in the controversy.

Anyhow, one of the first things I'm trying to figure out is whether post.blog took down the comments section because of profanity and personal attacks, or because it couldn't handle harsh criticism of its reporting.

Although the Post thought it had deleted the offending comments, a number of bloggers on both left and right have recovered the comments and posted them here, here and here.

Out of curiosity, I read around 100 or so of the comments (out of a thousand or so) and found none of the profanity or hate speech the Post had cited to justify its decision. However, Brainster has gone over the comments more carefully and come up with some pretty offensive ones. Which leads me to wonder if the Post could've avoided this whole controversy with selective deletions rather than a total shut-down.

With all of that said, it's time to move on to the debate about whether the Post did the right thing. I'm going to punt on this issue for the moment since I have to run some errands and then clean up my apartment before my girlfriend show up from New York. But here are some links to follow:

WaPo editor Jim Brady defends his decision in interviews with Jay Rosen and Hugh Hewitt. For the left, Steve Gilliard deconstructs Brady's responses to Rosen while Jane Hamsher slams his answers to Hewitt. There's more criticism from Hamsher here, here and here.

Atrios says: Wanker.

Glenn Reynolds briefly defends the Post here. Finally, Jay Rosen rounds up the response on both sides in the "After Matter" section below his interview with Brady [scroll down, no anchor link].

Until later... (3) opinions -- Add your opinion