Back up!

Pun intended. Yes, Blogger has restored my posting status after nearly a day, after locking me down as a suspected splog. And many, many thanks to Canadian Cynic for hosting me during this mercifully short period of exile.

However, I owe CC an apology. I reacted this morning as countless other bloggers did, having learned that they had been shut down by Blogger. It turned out to be an attack by a rogue spam-seeking missile. But I thought my views had something to do with it. Given the ease with which blogs can now be "flagged" to Blogger for "objectionable content," I ASSumed. Never ASSume. And, because I have some street cred with CC, he posted an indignant challenge to conservatives at his place, and I posted my own thoughts there as well.

Readers will note that I updated those thoughts, after CC did a little digging, as I should have done, and discovered that blogs left and blogs right, as well as knitters, visual artists and just plain folks were locked down as well. He had to put up another post to clear the air.

Meanwhile, the forums at Blogger were simply crammed with furious people today. A search on Google Blogs revealed that progressives thought it was the Right, right-wingers thought it was the Left, and some Catholics figured they were the target.

As I said at CC's place, I should have held my fire on this one. "Back up" is good self-advice. Check out Google Blogs and search, as moderate Republican Carrie's Nation suggests, on "google blogger spam censorship." The paranoid clamour has been truly interdenominational, and I contributed to it. Mea culpa.