Deleted on lawyers advice

Bryan Spondre's keen to protect his talent. Matthew Hooton's been throwing out raw meat complete with wild and unsubstantiated accusations of corruption but any hint of criticism and Bryan deleterious hand descends to obliterate it.

His footprint is left however to tell you you've transgressed:

You’ve not c... Comment deleted because our lawyers told us too. Bryan Spondre Blog Producer.

I'm assuming my comment was considered prima facie defamatory, however it merely said that Matthew hadn't calmed down since Eye to Eye and that he shouldn't lend his considerable gravitas to the whirlygig of the right-wing blogosphere.

Ironic, sure. Sarcastic, yup. Insulting, not really. Defamatory, don't be ridiculous.

What's a little hard to understand is that Matthew's the tough-guy that stood-up to Winston and gave him an ear-full. Is he really so fragile that a gentle prod in the ribs requires editing?

Surprisingly, editing critical comments appears acceptable on the right. In response to a hopelessly ill-informed rant by Cactus Kate on, amongst other things, education comments I made about how well NZ was doing were not published (personal insults were fine but). In response to silly speculation by the wellingtonhive that government was restricting access to critical blogs, my clearly ironic piss-take was deleted also.

At kiwiblogblog, we accepted that our inflamatory posts would attract similarly inflammatory responses. We applied a tolerance in those, but not all, instances.

My advice for these bloggers is if don't want to be mocked; Calm down.