Due to rampant incivility, often crossing the line into hate speech, there are a few New Hampshire political websites that I avoid discussing here. Free Keene and Blue Hampshire top the list. In fact, I stopped posting at Blue Hampshire for exactly that reason.

So I was stunned by a recent post by Kathy Sullivan at Blue Hampshire. It's titled Free Staters Behaving Badly (and I include the link reluctantly).

The charge?:
Back story: a Manchester right wing talk show host put a poll up on is web site for people to vote on who should be the person of the year for greater Manchester. A Manchester police officer, Dan Doherty, who was badly wounded but survived a shooting in 2012 was nominated, as was a free stater whom I’ve never heard of.

... One person, identified as Daniel Cuevas, called a murdered Manchester police officer a “pig”. Another, David Crawford, called Officer Doherty a “statist brute”, and referred to the website where the poll was posted as a “statist website.”

I don't agree with those comments, but... that's it? A few tasteless comments from some non-prominent, rank and file Free Staters? (And one of them isn't even a Free Stater!)

For comparison, let's read a comment from Blue Hampshire:
The state 2012 election is set to be a referendum on the extreme, hate-filled right-wing agenda of Bill O’Brien and his henchmen, including the Free State carpetbaggers.

Just a little hypocritical, right?

Actually, I lied. That wasn't a comment. It was a blog post. And not just any post— a post from one of the editors of the website. Naturally, it was promoted to the front page. (In the website layout of the time, posts started their life in a sidebar on the page, and only those posts deemed truly meritorious by the site editors were moved to the center of the page.)

And it doesn't end there, either. I actually pointed out that these statements were inappropriate and unprofessional. (Me! The neanderthal Free Stater!) The response was, predictably, more of the same:
[text lost due to website bug] to take over political institutions ALWAYS resent being called carpetbaggers. The Free State Movement is the purest example of such unprincipled self-promotion since the Civil War.
Calling you out on that is not a matter of hate.

Apparently, in enlightened liberal circles, "carpetbagger" is a purely descriptive term. As Steve Vaillancourt would say, "You just can't make this stuff up!"

On Blue Hampshire, these kinds of tasteless slurs occur constantly. They're the norm, not the exception. And they are posted by the most active and prominent members of the community. (Another Blue Hampshire editor, susanthe, is about twice as bad as Elwood above.) I can count the number of times a liberal poster has objected to them on two fingers. Neither of the two were Kathy Sullivan.

So when I read this recent post from Kathy Sullivan, and comprehend the level of hypocrisy involved, it is sincerely shocking to me. It's disgraceful, and it makes me ashamed to be a Democrat.

But that's par for the course at Blue Hampshire.

[Disclosure: Yes, I did move here for the Free State Project a long time ago. And it shouldn't matter.]