When a Washington Monthly ‘open thread’ is not

Steve Benen and/or WM staff has closed comments on this thread, his usual end-of-day political roundup.

Why?

My best guess is a throwaway link about Obama’s town hall and saying he’s not going to legalize marijuana.

Benen’s “close the thread” antic is as weak and chickenshit as Obama’s answer to the marijuana-issue was, though neither is quite as bad as Team Obama removing the question from Obama’s original list of questions to answer.

Update, 2:30 p.m. Central: Benen says he has never closed a commment thread as a blogger, via e-mail. I ask him to explain why, both then and now, this particular post is the only one on the page where you can't comment, either in the comments pop-up box or the permalink.

I told him I stand by my assumption that he, or somebody else at WM (I didn't say it was necessarily you, Steve), deliberately did the closure. But, I find it hard to believe this is an Internet or blogging program glitch.

Hey, if you did it because of NORML comments, per Team Obama trying to avoid discussing the question, fine. But, something happened, and it appears deliberate.

Finally, in his second e-mail, not his first, Benen, after referring to comment moderators in the original e-mail, says it was specifically because of some Xanax spam. Why he didn't mention that in the first e-mail, I don't know.

He also said he's not usually informed of when moderators (which include Blue Girl still, I'm sure... blecch; another "salute Democrats only" liberal who booted me from a joint blog after inviting me) intervene. Well, you told me the cause, in the second e-mail, Steve. Let's see how long it takes you to follow my suggestion and actually note, at the end of the post, that's a closed post.

And, to claim you're unaware of when a moderator shuts down a comment thread?

You, like most big bloggers, read the threads and actually post responses on occasion. Please. I'm not 100 percent buying that, either.

If that is 100 percent true, you have an internal communication problem, then. Don't blame that on me either.

Other than that, I know, I'm a mix of left-liberal, civil libertarian and anti-duopoly poster, which in the eyes of somebody like Steve, probably puts me at about 7.5 on the troll scale, 1-10.

And, I can be wrong at times. I was wrong about the cause of this shutdown. That said, I'll make another, not observation, but guess. Benen probably knew of the shutdown by the time I attempted to post, even if he didn't know the cause. How hard is it to update the last line of a blog post to say that it's no longer open due to spamming?

I've updated this blog twice, since Steve's first e-mail. True, it's a slow Friday at the office, but I do have a day job. And, I'm live-drafting for fantasy baseball at the same time.

One final thought: When I think of Democrats-right-or-wrong bloggers, I am reminded of the Iranian philosopher Idries Shah, who said, “There are never just two sides to anything.” Third parties aren't necessarily the “right” side, but they are a third or fourth or fifth side that deserves a hearing.