No, it's NOT symmetric

On the LT talk pages, conservatives are claiming that liberals are mean, too.

It's also been pointed out that the conservative board is open to all comers - but the 'progressive and liberal' board requires "join this group to post." (Which they take to mean that Cs are more open to dialog - but it might just as easily mean that the P&L board attracts more abusive drive-bys.)

But it's not symmetric. Liberals don't call for the elimination of conservatives. And it's not the nasty mean liberals attacking, say, Brownback, who are forcing CBS to shut off comments on their news stories:

CBSNews.com Turns Off Comments on Obama Stories

Today CBSNews.com informed its staff via email that they should no longer enable comments on stories about presidential candidate Barack Obama. The reason for the new policy, according to the email, is that stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments.

"It's very simple," Mike Sims, director of News and Operations for CBSNews.com, told me. "We have our Rules of Engagement. They prohibit personal attacks, especially racist attacks. Stories about Obama have been problematic, and we won't tolerate it."

CBSNews.com does sometimes delete comments on an individual basis, but Sims said that was not sufficient in the case of Obama stories due to "the volume and the persistence" of the objectionable comments. There has been a fierce debate about how news outlets should handle reader comments....

"If you're an African American and you read about someone being called a porch monkey, that overrides any positive thing that you would read in the comments," he said.

CBSNews.com has no plans to disable comments on stories about the other presidential candidates, according to Sims. As for comments on Obama stories, he said the site is open to eventually bringing them back.
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This came out at the same time as the announcement that Obama would now be getting Secret Service protection.

It's just not symmetric:
Conservatives get argued with. Maybe conservatives even get insulted.

But liberals get racism and death threats.

.