a slur deleted

via tdw, i see that rishawn biddle's controversial post has been deleted* and star editor dennis ryerson has issued an apology:

Recently comments on this blog were posted by a Star staff member, which included offensive, insensitive and wholly inappropriate words in reference to Indianapolis/Marion County City-County Council President Monroe Gray. Those comments have been removed. These comments absolutely did not meet the Standards of The Star. I apologize to Council President Gray, and to all communities who with good reason were highly offended by the remarks.

curiously, the other rishawn biddle post i discussed recently, the one explaining why the ed board didn't endorse greg ballard, has also been expunged, which suggests that biddle and all his posts have been permanently removed from expresso. at some point, i or someone else might want to browse back through the official expresso archives looking for his older material.

* of course, as i discovered long ago, nothing ever gets truly deleted from the indy star blogs. indeed, rishawn's posts are still there if you know the url to them. they have been removed from the blog front page, and links to them will no longer appear (except in other "deleted" posts). but the files are still there, and all those links in the blogs to the offensive post still work. i've mentioned this more than once on my blog only to be ignored, but perhaps now someone will take notice.

update: rishawn's older posts appear to be intact. just his october posts have been removed, presumably along with his ability to post new ones.

2nd update: more from ruth holladay:

I can't get Amos Brown WTLC 1310-am out here unless I'm in the car, but I am told Amos has been raking RiShawn and the Star over the coals the past two days for Biddle's language.

Someone in the know, with longtime ties to the editorial department, commented on RiShawn's name-calling: "How stupid can you get? ...

Then, as for how it even happened: "Dennis is supposed to be so much of a monitor of those (editorial) pages. How could he let this go through?"

Biddle reportedly has had problems in the past with submitting material that was inflammatory, and editorial page editor Tim Swarens had warned him that certain columns were "not publishable."

3rd update: rishawn biddle has been fired.¶