O'Reilly vs. Hot Air

The other night, Bill O'Reilly confused blog posts with comments with regards to the popular conservative site Hot Air.



Michelle Malkin and crew were understandably upset by this, and it showed how little O'Reilly understands the whole blogging thing that he confused the two. It's one thing to point out that the sorts of regular commenters one gets can be a reflection on the sort of blog one runs, but no blogger is responsible for what commenters say.

Last night, O'Reilly apologized for his error, then proceeded to lecture Michelle Malkin and the Hot Air crew for not policing the comments better. Allahpundit responds by saying such back-checking wouldn't be cost effective, but I think a better argument is that people should be allowed to make fools of themselves (see Jeromy Brown's attempts at legal analysis for a terrific example) on the web without much interference. It's one thing if the person says truly vile things, but if someone wants to play the Hussein card, then that's their problem.