Post can't handle teh internets

Seems that after the blogosphere reacted to Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell's Abramoff misrepresentations, the Post has turned off comments on their blog to prevent a flow of obscenities and personal attacks. Jim Brady's response sounds a wee bit prudish, if you ask me:

Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about.

Teh internets are simply not the place for "civil conversation" - looking at bloggers as a kind of culture, it's pretty clear that there is no shared taboo against profanity and attack, and a general aversion to censorship means that the Post's actions likely exacerbated bloggers' frustration, thus increasing the frequency and tenacity of the offending comments. And then there are all the trolls, who should by now be a known hazard of allowing comments on websites of any type.

Anyway, some good commentary over at Crooks and Liars, which includes:

She didn't deliver the truth, Jim! That's a lot different than what we want to hear. If Howell responded quickly and made a change to her initially "faulty" reporting this would have been averted, but she and the Post stuck their heads in the sand and attacked the messengers. It's a fairly typical Rovian tactic. We have to scream and yell to get anyone to start taking a look at problems, then are labeled as trolls.