I think ChuckW hit the nail on the head.

As my background would suggest, I also detest political correctness. The deletion of the post was not in the interest of political correctness, as most have determined. The thread remains because it is a good subject and, as seems, a good source for discussion.

A moderator is often placed in the interesting position to determine when something may or may not violate RCU rules for posting. The deletion of a post is not something that is directed to a person or done so maliciously, but is to enforce the rules of RCU.

Our job is to both protect the posters from some spiteful posters, and I am sure every one of you have read some posts that are not very complementary, and to enforce the rules. RCU can't be put in a position where someone puts something in a post that is inflamatory or promotes voilation of a law, no matter how much in jest it is done.

We have absolutely no idea what the mindset is of the person making a post, what the intentions are, no matter what the post. We, for the most part, leave things alone, but occasionally, we will delete something that some may think should remain.

It's a fun job, but some times, it's somewhat difficult to make decisions that may upset the applecart. Hey, we get paid huge amounts of money to do this job... Lighten up, folks, and accept that we do our jobs as best we can.

Thanks, ChuckW. I appreciate your candor and your understanding.

Now, as a part of continuing the disucssion, two years ago, I was flying my Excelleron 90. I was making a trm pass when I heard a "whump" type of noise. At the time I heard the noise, I saw a seagull about, oh, 50 feet away. No big deal. I continued flying for about 12 minutes, then set up for a landing. The landing was unusually rough for the conditions, but I just decided that it was my slop for the first flight of the day, and went out and picked up my plane.

When I looked at it, there were white feathers hanging from the back of my plane, and the tail wheel assembly was missing. Eventually, I found the tail wheel, it was in a spot that was pretty much directly under where I though I heard this "whump" noise. As it turns out, I actually hit the seagull. It flew away. The reason I saw it about 50 feet away was the delay from the time I actually hit the bird to the time I actually heard the noise.

We often have buzzards out at the field, it's in a remote location and we often find deer carcus's lying around.. often killed by Coyotes, and the buzzards are usually eating dinner at the time we arrive. Then, they hang around while we fly, often we fly among them, but not intentionally. After I hit the seagull, I realized how lucky both me and the seagull were. So, I avoid flying among the birds.

CGr.