chedstone.com

Early today, I posted a comment on Editor Mark Vasché’s story on “Golden Age of Newspapers II — still exciting but more challenging.” You may remember that I have commented on that story previously. In my comment I stated,

“Super excited for Vasche’s next piece. Let’s take bets on whether or not he continues to dig his own hole or not. My bet’s on he’s still going to be a douchebag. Anyone else?”

Well about 10 minutes ago I recieved an email from Dan Day, Censor in Chief Deputy Editor for Interactive Media at The Modesto Bee stating that I couldn’t call his editor a douchebag.  Apparently douchebag is an offensive and unacceptable term and doesn’t comply with “language standards” (which are not posted anywhere that I can see on their website).  The email follows,

“Sir or Madam,

We have deleted your comment from modbee.com suggesting that our editor is a “douchebag.”

You are welcome to criticize us, but please adhere to the language standards on our commenting system.

As a courtesy, I have copied your posting below. You are welcome to resubmit it without the offending term.

Sincerely,

Dan”

It’s really interesting to see a newspaper whose goal is to uphold the right to freedom of speech is now censoring user comments.  Whatever, now you are both douche-bags.

I still want my voice heard so I ammended my comment to read:

“Super excited for Vasche’s next piece. Let’s take bets on whether or not he continues to dig his own hole. My bet’s on he’s still going to be unintelligibly oblivious. Anyone else?”