I didn't comment on Post columnist Anne Applebaum's first short web piece in defense of Roman Polanski. Among its many flaws, it claimed that there was "evidence" that Polanski believed the girl he statutorily raped was older (in fact, he stated under oath that he knew she was 13),  and it failed to disclose that Applebaum's husband, Radoslaw Sikorski, is a Polish minister who,  in his official role, was appealing to U.S. authorities to drop the proceedings against Polanski. But Applebaum's followup is really too much to ignore. She begins [her words indented, the commenter's in italics]:

Of all the many and unexpected responses I received to my four-paragraph blog post on Roman Polanski, two struck me as worthy of reaction. Here is the first, from an online comment:

Hey Ann Applebaum do you have a young daughter? How about I rape her??? Please, I just love raping little girls.

The comment, obviously, is repellent. But what's most striking is that this ugly idiocy is one of just two comments, out of several hundred, that Applebaum considers worthy of response. Many even-toned commenters made persuasive arguments against Applebaum's position. But instead of replying to any of them, she instead chose to address the most cretinous thug she could find, in what I can only read as an effort to make herself look reasonable by comparison.

The second comment she prints is a comparable example of defensive sifting, more subtle but arguably more disingenuous: