Blogs & Tweets, where do they go?

Yesterday, I was sending around a provocative piece by WaPo ed beat writer, Bill Turque, on the whole Michelle Rhee fiasco, when suddenly, about 7:30 p.m., his story disappeared. When friends went to the link, they were greeted with some kind of "no longer available" sign. I tweeted around, asking, "what happened to Turque?" Nobody seemed to know.

Had the Post editorial board censored him for revealing the disparity between street reporting and editorial decisions re. Rhee? Did Mayor Fenty and Rhee's big-money supporters demand Turque's head? Paranoia runs deep these days.

But as the sun comes up this morning, (everywhere except here in Chicago, I suppose) I see Turque's D.C. Schools Insider column is back on line. Must have been some kind of technical problem, right? But wait a minute. Something has been changed. In the last paragraph of Turque's original piece, he asks:

Are Fenty and Rhee gaming the system by using the editorial page this way? Of course. Is this a healthy thing for readers of The Post? Probably not. Is it going to keep me from doing my job effectively? Nope.

Damn! That was the very line I had pulled out and tweeted about yesterday. But when the column reappeared this morning, the entire last paragraph was missing--except for, "Is it going to keep me from doing my job effectively? Nope." Luckily, I had made a copy of Turque's original column.

Now that last question looms large. As the old saying goes, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not trying to get you.

Another disappearing Act

This one, not nearly as significant, although still Rhee-related.

On Tuesday, I had a little, not-so-friendly exchange with ed gadfly blogger, Alexander Russo. Russo, in his TWIE blog, had launched a broadside against Rhee's critics, charging them with opportunism for jumping all over the D.C. superintendent for saying:

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school."

Russo continued his Tweet assault, with the lead-in "I'm no Rhee apologist, but..."

When I responded, Russo took me to task for criticizing Rhee's stupid remarks claiming, I was "defending bad teachers."

But by Wednesday, all of Russo's blog posts about Rhee's statement had vanished along with all of Russo's Tuesday tweets about Rhee. When I and several other bloggers asked him if he had removed them, Russo simply tweeted, "Nope. They're still there."

They aren't. Russo made them go away. Why? Was he embarrassed? If you go to his blog now, you will find a dateline from Sept. 3 instead of his apologies for Rhee's remarks. Strange!