HEH. I’D MISSED THIS PIECE BY SONNY BUNCH: Gawker: It’s Cool to Punish OTHER People for Their Words, Just Not Us.

They don’t quite understand the world they’ve created. They think it’s the worst thing in the whole world for Internet Tough Guys to make death and rape threats* and also that it’s cool to joke about Bristol Palin actually being physically assaulted by a man. Because stoopid Rethuglicans, you know? Most amusingly, they don’t even seem to understand the contradiction. So they get really butthurt when someone else whips up an Internet rage mob against them. “Don’t you understand?” they seem to be crying. “We’re the good guys here! We only take on bad people! Those Other people. That aren’t good. Like us!”

This is how you get to a place where Gawker Media is forced to talk out of both sides of its mouth, on the one hand callowly apologizing to readers (and, let’s be honest, advertisers) for one of its writers launching a disgusting pro-bullying attack on a marginalized group while simultaneously apologizing for the apology and denouncing anti-Gawker campaigns as little better than “fascism” in order to maintain their street cred with their bros. It’s a genius move, in a way, one that allows Gawker to tell the companies it relies on for revenue that it’s really and truly sorry while also doing nothing to alienate its core readership of angry progressive know-nothings.

But I can remember a time when Gawker Media was perfectly happy to take part in “fascist” campaigns to ruin the lives of those they disagreed with—or just, like, made a joke they didn’t like.

Gawker doesn’t like the world they made. I think a lot of other media folks are going to find out the same thing.