BEEN AND GONE

Presumably because their readers have the memories of mice, the PP Boyz run this excruciating reminder every single day:

We love having you comment here at Pure Poison but it’s a little bit difficult for discussion to continue uninterrupted on specific posts when off-topic comments land in the middle of them. So each day we’ll launch an open thread where you can leave comments that don’t quite fit on one of the other posts. Remember that tip-offs can be made here.

Have at it!

The task of posting this always falls to Tobias or Scott. Jezzy is above the mundane work-a-day requirements of a lowly PP drone. By the way, the linked tip-offs page still shows the dumped Ant Rogenous as a contributor -- come on guys, surely it's not expecting too much that you'll stay up to date with events at your own blog.

Anyway, the PP open threads are where the action is: over the past few days authored posts have attracted an average 19 comments; open threads 33, with Andrew Bolt featuring prominently, of course.

Today's open thread got out of hand with one of the PP boyz -- or possibly a Crikey editor -- stealthily removing this comment after it had been up for hours:

More racism on show here…regarding Obama’s speech about Israel-Palestine. Bolt is careful to make Jews the focus of his assertions rather than Israelis as a whole. It sounds so much more exciting that way, doesn’t it?

The comment shouldn't have been approved in the first place and definitely shouldn't have been removed without notice: this is exactly the sort of intellectual dishonesty the PP boyz claim to be fighting. Their mission statement should be changed to reflect reality: "exemplifying intellectual dishonesty".

Update: An edited version of the missing comment has now appeared with this note:

{NB: This comment was approved in unedited form earlier today but should not have been. The comment was removed while there was discussion among the PP authors about the appropriate moderation approach. The comment has now been reinstated in edited form. We apologise for the lapse in moderation process.}

Why not simply remove the comment noting that the "appropriate moderation approach" was being discussed? The PP boyz are champion squirmers.

Editing note: "z" added.