Backstage On The Huffpo

Comment moderator's note:

When I came online today there was a balckog of hundreds of unapproved comments on all posts, inlcuding Sheldon Drobny's. The backlog is because of the weekend abscence of two of our comment moderators, due to their vacation plans. I am just starting to moderate the backlog of comments, thank you for your patience.

Julia Marsh, Comment Moderator

One of the nice things about being a contributor of the Huffpo is a site you get for posting called "BACKSTAGE HOME." Besides having the tools to post, you get information about approved and unapproved comments. Unapproved comments eventually show up at an almost 100% rate. It does not mean that the comments are not worthy of posting (sorry for the double negative). Some of you may have noticed that your comments do not immediately appear on a particular post.

Below is the status of comments from my recent posts all criticizing Maher and the Hollywood folks:

My Response To Some Comments On Recent Posts
(Comments: 14 approved, 73 unapproved)
Air America Complaint Department
(Comments: 58 approved, 9 unapproved)
Bill Maher: A Retraction Clarification
(Comments: 82 approved, 2 unapproved)
Bill Maher Retraction
(Comments: 11 approved, )
Bill Maher: Another Hollywood Sellout
(Comments: 103 approved, 1 unapproved)

As you can see, almost all of the comments were eventually approved. My latest post showing Hitchins fingering the Maher audience was posted 08.26.2006 at 03:51pm and yet 73 of the 87 posts have been held back for nearly 19 hours. The same thing happened with the other Maher/Hollywood posts. In the past, I have had many posts that got lots of comments that were all approved within a couple of hours. The whole point of getting comments posted on the various blogs is to keep the action going and increase the average time of each person on the blog.

Blogs increase their adverising rates by both average time and frequency of "hits." The fact that Maher is a friend of the Huffpo and I got a personal call from Arianna (who has never called me before) about my post, "Bill Maher: Another Hollywood Sellout" gives me further pause. I have spent almost 40 years doing forensic investigative work. There are two components of uncovering malfeasance:
1. Observe behavior that differs from the norm; and
2. Find out who benefits.

I need an explanation for the fact that Maher benefited from the unusual hold back delays of the commentors posts about Bill Maher. The blogosphere is supposed to be the highest form of free speech and with all the F words and C words I see on the Huffpo comments, it is hard for me to believe that Huffpo gives serious review of comments that need to be withheld. It is possible that Huffpo is having technical difficulties which need to be explained to its contributors. But, that aside, we don't want censorship or cronyism on the blogosphere.

P.S. If the 9/11 Commision had hired me, the suffering widows would have gotten some cogent answers. Using the 2 principles I state above, 1. Observe behavior that differs from the norm; and 2. Find out who benefits can really be effective. But one has to be "independent" in their thinking and not have a vested interest in those who they are investigating.