Should I allow comments from racist trolls?

Ok, so it seems like there's been an upswing in race-hating douchebags leaving comments on my blog recently. Most of them have just been on a couple of old posts.


So far I've let them stay up, but I've been thinking long and hard about that. Generally, I have only deleted comments that are obviously spam (most don't make it past the spam filter anyway), or the rare comment that I decide is too objectionable to stay up.


I want to point out that I don't have a problem with someone having a different view to me. One person who comments here quite regularly, Bay Area Guy, identifies himself broadly as a White Nationalist. This would mark him as having a very different ideology to me; however, he engages in intelligent discussion/argument without being rude or inflammatory, so I have no reason to moderate any of his comments.


On occasion, there are commenters who think that aiming personal abuse at me is the appropriate way to behave. I generally allow those comments to stand, primarily because my competitive instincts take over and I like to argue with stupid people.


... but then there are those that are on another level of douchebaggery.


Here are comments on two different posts from two people named Anonymous.


WARNING: If you are easily offended, read below at your own risk. Explicit and racist language follow.


These are from my rather old post on the TV show Merlin having a black actress playing Guinevere (read it here). These are replies to other comments, which I have not included here.

Charming. He must be fun at a dinner party.
This next lot of comments is from my post about the ethnic diversity on display amongst journalists on Australian TV channel SBS (read the full post here). I have reproduced the entire exchange between myself and the commenter. 

Should I allow their comments to stay up? Or should I send them to the trash?


Here are some of the reasons to allow them and not to:

• These people have abhorrent views and I don't want to give them any more air.
• By being vile and aggressive towards me and others, they have forfeited their right to express themselves in this forum. Sharing an opinion is fine, but if you can't do it in a civil manner, then you don't get to share yours.
• I don't want readers to be unnecessarily confronted by racially inflammatory language, as ideally this would be a relatively safe space for readers to frequent.

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND...

• Given that this blog often discusses the subject of race and racism, comments like these serve as an example of the sort of views that are out there.
• By being vile and aggressive, they undermine their stupid cause anyway, because it makes them look like morons. Anyone who reads the above comments is unlikely to be converted a racist way of thinking; indeed it may well do the opposite.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Although to be honest it'd be nice if your thoughts didn't include the words "nigger" or "cunt".

Having problems...

Having some blogging issues at the moment...

Bear with me while I try to sort it out, folks. Hopefully all will be well again very soon.

Shock and disbelief as Andrew Bolt is revealed to be racist

Australia's most popular news columnist, Andrew Bolt, found himself on the wrong end of a Federal Court decision this week. Justice Mordy Bromberg found the right-wing polemicist and his publisher the Herald-Sun guilty of a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. The paper will be forced to print an apology. The court found that 2 articles Bolt penned about certain fair-skinned members of the Aboriginal community were racially offensive, humiliating and "destructive of racial tolerance".

You can read the articles for yourself (White fellas in the black, and It's so hip to be black) although for legal reasons they may not stay up on the web for too long.

Predictably, the Right in Australia have collectively tut-tutted about the threat to free speech, with the Coalition signalling it will try to amend the Act if it gets in to power. By contrast the Left in Australia, who have long viewed Bolt as some kind of racist climate-change-denying Antichrist, seem happy to see the guy cop a legal beating.

For me, there are a few aspects to consider. Will this truly be a landmark ruling ushering in a new Orwellian approach to censorship in this country, as some are saying? Time will tell. While I believe there is certainly a place for legislation dealing with racial discrimination and vilification, I'm skeptical about its use in anything that's not a clear and fairly extreme case. I don't like most of what Bolt has to say, but in the main I think he should have a right to say it, just as other people should have the right to call Bolt a bit of a douche in reaction. Rather than trying to shut Bolt up, I'd prefer the Left lift its game, since Bolt's primary drawcard is his ability to point out stupidity on the Left. (Let's be honest, both sides of the spectrum have stupidity in spades if you look for it.) But it's important to keep in mind the particular details of this case. Bolt got facts wrong, quite basic facts, about the people who subsequently brought the case against him. While Bolt denies accusing fair-skinned Aborigines of identifying as black for cynical motives, the tone of these articles and others (this has been a long-running theme on the Bolt blog) certainly casts these people in a negative light for having the nerve to call themselves indigenous.

I've never been a fan of Andrew Bolt and have had my share of things to say about him on this blog, particular his love of highlighting "ethnic crime". I do feel a tiny bit sorry for him on this occasion, however, because I happen to agree with one of his points.

I have no issue with people claiming Aboriginal identity even though they might be predominantly European in ancestry and have a corresponding appearance; I'm in no position to judge how Aboriginal their upbringing was. I also have no issue with affirmative action policies for Aboriginal Australians; given our shameful history, there needs to be at least some measures in place to give them a leg up. However, it is where these two concepts meet where a problem can occur. Positive discrimination for Aborigines occurs in order to counter the racism and disadvantaged upbringings that they so frequently experience... yet does someone who is 3/4 white and is raised in a predominantly white environment actually experience these challenges to a substantive degree?

So while I don't think it is fair to question whether a "white" Aborigine is actually an Aborigine, it does seem fair to question whether they are entitled to all the financial benefits and opportunities that come with being Aboriginal when they almost certainly do not suffer the same level of disadvantage that a "black" Aborigine does. Particularly in cases where "black" Aborigines, a great many of whom are truly needy, are actually missing out on opportunities to Aborigines who are effectively white in appearance.

So Bolt actually had a point in there somewhere. It's a shame then that it had to be made by someone whose writings have shown repeated antipathy to the Aboriginal cause, and indeed to any culture that is not North-Western European in origin. It didn't take a court decision to prove that Bolt is a racist, or at very least "racially insensitive" or "racially inflammatory"; that was pretty well known already. But a wise man can admit that once in a while, one's ideological opponents can sort of get it right on some things. And if Bolt's overall tone was not so contemptuous of non-white people, maybe people on the other side of the spectrum might actually be able to listen to him without working themselves into a rage.

The junk that's on everyone's lips

I've experienced a marked upsurge in blog traffic recently. While I'd like to think that the world is finally taking notice of my considerable genius, it has much more to do with the vagaries of Google searches.

I once wrote a post entitled The Asian penis in popular culture, which is about how mocking the alleged size of Asian men's genitalia has a tacit acceptance in movies and television. Part of that post contains a reference to actor Ken Jeong, who appears stark naked in both Hangover movies, revealing what could probably be described as a micropenis.

That one page has received 2,357 hits this week alone. Why?

Well, The Hangover 2 has just come out, and it turns out that if you type in "Ken Jeong penis", my blog is the second entry listed. Hooray for me! I've finally achieved my ultimate blogging ambition: to be a haven for people who possibly have a unhealthy obsession with Ken Jeong and his miniscule junk.

So I present to you, in all it's glory... the Ken Jeong-related search terms that have led people to my blog this week.

ken jeong tiny penis
ken jeong's small penis
Ken Jeong Mini penis
is ken jeong dick really that small?
ken jeong tiny dick
ken jeong was naked
ken jeong actual penis size
ken jeong cock
tiny penis ken jeoung
does ken jeong have a penis?
is ken jeong's penis small?
how big is Ken Jeong dick
ken jeong genitalien
ken jeongs small dick
does ken jeong have the world's smallest dick?
is ken jeongs penis really that small?
ken jeong penis podcast
Ken Jeong penis naked
ken jeong small penis picture
asian penis hangover
ken jeong + penis
is ken jeong's penis that small?
why does ken jeong have a small penis?
ken jeong real penis size
does ken jeong really have a small dick?
is ken jeongs penis that small?
Ken Jeong small penis

The other blog post of mine that generates the most traffic is Race, IQ and penis size. So if you're smart and you're a blogger, you'll clearly realise that the way to generate maximum blog hits is to write about penises as much as you can. You could just call your blog "Penis Blog" and in no time you'd become the Bill Gates of blogging.

And for the record: yes, it's real. Apparently that is his tiny little dong.

So on behalf of men of Asian ancestry everywhere, I say: thanks a f*cking bunch, Ken. It's one thing to have the kind of pecker that even small rodents would find inadequate. But did you have to exhibit it quite so much? You are now the poster boy for Asian penises. What about those of us who have regular sized junk? How do you think that makes us look? If, God forbid, The Hangover 3 ever gets released, we may reach the point where no woman will be able to contemplate getting their swerve on with an Asian man without worrying about the possibility that he suffers from a case of Jeong-dong. So keep the damn thing in your pants.


In other whang-related news, the other penis that everyone is talking about is that of New York congressman Anthony Weiner (yeah, I know), who is accused of sending a picture of his robustly bulging underpants to some young woman on Twitter. Weiner claims someone hacked into his account.

The Daily Show is having a lot of fun with this story as you'd expect.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Circumcision 2011 - Between a C*#k and a Hard Place - Weiner Investigation
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Big Wang Theory
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Blogging and cross-posting elsewhere...

Obviously one blog is not enough to contain my blogging mojo, and I'm writing at a couple of other blogs at the moment.

I'll be posting some stuff over at Brown Pundits, a South Asian-focused blog run by Razib Khan and Zachary Latif. My first proper post is up, in which I look at the family-centric approach of so many Asian and African cultures and question whether it has negative implications on a broader social level. You can read that here.

I'll also be guest blogging at Peril, an online Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine, and my posts should appear sometime in the next month or so. Keep an eye out, the content will be exclusive to Peril, but I'll link to my posts from here.

An Asian-American and Asian-Australian connection

Sydney vlogger Natalie Tran (of Community Channel) caught up with Philip Wang of Wong Fu Productions this week for this chat. I have limited appetite for vlogs - something about the format of it just seems to annoy me - but Tran is pretty likeable. It strikes me that with close to a million subscribers on Youtube (number 1 in Australia and the 28th most subscribed person of all time), she is possibly the best-known Asian-Australian in the world. Can't fault that.


Btw, Tran is not the only Vietnamese-Australian notching up major hits on the 'tube. Melbourne's John Luc, aka mychonny, has the 2nd most subscribed channel in Australia (and the 4th most, oddly enough).