How To Break the Internet: The Stranger Hell Houses Edition

A reader, who shall remain nameless so that he doesn't get a brick through his windshield, passed me a tip yesterday regarding Seattle's The Stranger publishing photos of houses with McCain-Palin and Dino Rossi signs (Dino Rossi is the GOP candidate for Guv'nah). The piece was poking fun at these residences for being "Hell Houses" for daring to post pro-GOP signs amidst a country being swept up in Hope N' Change. That's all fun and games as far as liberal hipsterism goes, but they definitely crossed the line by publishing the addresses of the residences, which could potentially lead to vandalism/death threats/etc. against private WA citizens. I passed the tip along to Van Helsing, who has a blog devoted to some of the ridiculous antics of the left. The story was picked up by some of the big-time right-wing bloggers like Instapundit, Drudge, Ace of Spades, and Little Green Footballs, because it was a sad display of a news outlet engaging in brownshirt-like tactics to intimidate political opposition.

I'm usually a big fan of The Stranger's snark and tips about what's happenin' in Seattle, so I initially felt a bit of guilt that their website getting flooded with 1000+ comments, and the fact that they had to redirect the Hell Houses piece to Drudge (pdf version available here). But picking up a copy of this week's print edition of The Stranger, their attempts to scrub the website amidst immense criticism are in vain, because the story has already hit kiosks throughout the Puget Sound. Check it out:

Cover of Oct 30 - Nov 5 issue advertises Hell Houses piece (unsurprisingly, the outlet endorses "That One" for Prez)

Addresses of homes have been blacked out by yours truly, but you can see they were in large font. The convenient inset map with numbers in the upper-right was not included on the web version.
You get the idea...

This is bullshit. It's a moot point who your candidate is or what platform you support. No American deserves to be intimidated with thug-like tactics designed to persuade voting patterns or to silence opposition. Whether it's throwing moltovs at politically-minded supporters or using the internet to plan the assassination of a presidential candidate, take that shit somewhere else, like Zimbabwe or Venezuela.