I should point out, for those unfamiliar with either Daily Gotham or Room 8, both NYC specific blogs, the problems that people have had with Wallner had nothing to do with support or opposition to Hillary Clinton...or Barak Obama, for that matter.

I should point out a recently joined name on Culture Kitchen is a well known Hillary supporter who ruffled some feathers on Daily Kos with his advocacy of Hillary. We know he just signed up and I have, prersonally, been anticipating his posts. I am happy to have him come on and plug his candidate...that's well within what we accept here even though we may not agree with him. And I assure everyone we will register our disagreement if we want to. But I personally welcome him (or any other candidate's partisan) to our site.

What finally got me about Wallner was his insistence that race shouldn't be discussed and that pointing out racism is "playing the race card." When he confronted a mixed race couple and suggested that they didn't understand racism, that pretty much lost him lots of sympathy on Daily Gotham. I certainly wasn't going to object to the banning of someone who vociferously insisted he, as a nice white liberal, understood racism better than a mixed race couple and that they should defer to him on the subject.

Having said that, I do know people who have worked with Wallner in the context of the above mentioned "Marjorie" meetups and found him perfectly pleasant and helpful. I am all for encouraging the participation of someone who is engaged in politics in a meaningful way. But I don't encourage white liberals lecturing blacks on racism and suggesting they just keep quiet. I should note in those very discussions where Wallner was suggesting we not talk about race because it will "turn people off" we had many people come on and say, whether they disagreed or agreed with our particular points, they were very thankful we were discussing the issue in detail and openly.

Finally, regarding the hijacking of threads: I do consider discussions online as very organic and don't really mind if threads get hijacked if they go to warm, sunny places that people find interesting. If the hijacking always takes the thread to a place the intellectual equivalent of North Korea, then I don't like it. In this case, the diary was an excellent expression of someone's liking for John Kerry, a politician I feel is unfairly attacked by many even if he never was my favorite. I would like to bring the thread slightly back to the topic by saying that I feel Kerry, like Gore, probably won and that fraud, intimidation and widespread but low level voter disenfranchisemet probably stole the election. I also feel that had Kerry, or Gore, won the election and taken office, this nation would be a thousand fold better off than it is now in a myriad of ways. I will also add that ALL of the Democratic candidates to date fall into that category of being a thousand times or more better than what we have had since Bush took office. If any of the democrats who have thrown their hat in the ring to date wins in 2008, I will be celebrating like hell. To me the choice is who will be around 900 fold better than Bush and who will be around 1100 fold better. And for the record, I think all the Republican candidates would be better than Bush, but perhaps only by a factor of 2-10.

So that's a little background on this subject.