Friday, November 09, 2007

Censored on Le Monde.fr — Eight Times!

Because I have lots of work and because I felt I had said just about everything there was to say (it was getting depressing to continue doing so), I started letting go of my other blog, Le Monde Watch, in favor sometimes of leaving notes on the appropriate Le Monde articles of the daily's web site (although its editors seem adamant in keeping reasoned thought and detailed analysis — because they might contradict their regal articles? — to a minimum, by allowing a maximum of two comments with a maximum of 500 characters each).

Apparently, that was not a good idea. Usually, I have encountered no problem in leaving comments on Le Monde.fr. For a recent article, however, I left a first comment, which was duly accepted, but the following day, I left a second message. When I checked a few hours later, it had not been accepted, and the "window" that allowed for the writing of a second message — usually "shut" after a user's second message has been accepted (since a maximum of only two are allowed) — was open again. This p'd me off, as I had to write the whole thing again (again taking pain-staking measures to make sure that the comment fit in the 500-character space), but I blamed the problem on my badly-functioning computer. A couple of hours later, however, it had again reverted to "you have one comment left to post". When rewriting it this time, I duly made a copy and over the next 30 hours, I have posted it again and again — all to no effect. It's apparently not good enough. It's apparently not worth keeping. It's apparently not as intelligent, and as reasoned, and as thought out, and as intellectual as all of the other comments on the site.

You can read the two comments on Le Monde Watch, (in blockquote form at the end of the article) — the one that was accepted and the one that was (that until now, at least, has been) censored — and you can judge for yourself what might have the cause of Le Monde.fr's intense displeasure (although Le Monde Watch's French text offers a couple of suggestions as the tabos that were violated)…

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