Mercurial Mercure censors 'uncensored' blog

John Mercure, a reporter for WTMJ-TV, started a blog recently that got some immediate attention, mostly because one of his early posts, about a sexual assault case, was so over the top.

Mercure's blog is called "Mercure Uncut" and says it is "John Mercure's uncensored blog on Big Investigations and life inside the TMJ4 newsroom."

His post on the sexual assault case looked like it could have been written by a homicidal maniac -- capital letters, huge type in some places, dozens of exclamation points. Everything but words cut out of the newspaper and pasted into a message, like a ransom note.

That all fit well with the content, which ranted and raved about the things that should be done to this sex offender, including castration. And Mercure was just getting warmed up.

[I wrote this on Sunday, wishing I had saved a copy of Mercure's rant. Serendipity: Journal Sentinel radio-TV columnist Tim Cuprisin wrote about it this morning, and said Mercure wrote: "This sick loser should be castrated . . . or strung up." His post, with 28 exclamation points, features big, bold capital letters proclaiming that "THERE IS A COZY PLACE IN A DARK CORNER OF HELL" for the offender.]

Charlie Sykes took note back when Mercure put up the original post:

TUESDAY, Feb. 28, 2006, 3:41 p.m.
NO HOLDING BACK

Usually, reporters are reluctant to express an opinion, much less a strong opinion. So it's interesting that John Mercure, a reporter on TMJ4, has a blog. I ran into him at the vending machines the other day and asked him whether he'd be blogging every day and whether he'd be holding back on his points of view. Well, we have our answer.

Today, he blogs about the Brian Homz sexual assault case. Let's just say, that Mercure doesn't make a secret of how he feels about the case.

Mercure uncaged is going to be awfully entertaining...

**UPDATE

He writes:
Charlie-
Thanks for reading.
I'm tired of holding back.
Life is too short to hold back.
-John

I have a new hero. (Sykes says)

Spivak and Bice took note, too, suggesting: "Maybe, in this one case, a little censorship wouldn't be such a bad idea."

Well, maybe Mercure has decided that life isn't too short to hold back after all. When you visit Mercure's blog now, you'll find none of that crazed rant I described. It has been sanitized. No calls for castration. No huge type in different colors.

Instead, you'll find the post below, which appears to have been written by a sane person. It's not mild, except by comparison to what he actually wrote the first time, which was about 50 times worse. Mercure doesn't even acknowledge that this is not what he wrote to begin with. He pretends this was his original post, and then gives people's responses -- including Sykes's -- which were to his first inflammatory screed.

Here's the new, censored, hold-back version of John Mercure:

I'm going to tell you the story of Brian Homz

The 38 year old from Germantown was rebuffed by his girlfriend when he tried to have sex with her.
Homz came up with a way to get even.
He raped the girlfriend's five year old daughter as she slept.
Then sat by as the little girl's grandfather was initially charged with the assault.
Thankfully, DNA evidence exonerated the grandfather and implicated Homz
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

You can read the Journal Sentinel article by Dan Benson

Some have said that the really disturbing part is that Homz committed this crime out of an animalistic need to exact some sick revenge against his adult girlfriend.
And now an innocent child is paying the price.

This is what Circuit Judge Patrick Faragher had to say about Homz:

"The defendant (Homz) chose to hurt the child's mother by hurting the child. I view this as an act of cold anger and revenge. (Then he spoke to Homz) "I believe you have a dark side and perpetrated a horrible crime. To rape a child to hurt the mother and let the grandfather be prosecuted is a horribly destructive criminal act."

And guess what Wisconsites (sic)... under current Wisconsin law this convicted felon will eventually get out of prison and be able to live wherever he wants. Even though he will have to register as a child sex offender, he will be able to live near schools, daycares, or parks. That's right, he'll be able to live wherever he wants.
That's outrageous!

But wait... there's one more facet to this story.
Apparently many of Homz' friends and family don't think what he did was that big a deal.
Judge Faragher says the volume of letters he received asking for leniency for Brian Homz dwarfs any he has ever seen.

Are you kidding me?!

Wonder what Sykes thinks of his new hero, now that it turns out that "Mercure uncaged" is actually on a short leash, and that "Mercure Uncut" has been cut down to size?