The bigotry that Joe Offer finally found offensive this week is nothing new at Mudcat. Remember the "Jewish jokes" thread. When someone complained that the so-called joke about Jews hanging their toilet paper out to dry was anti-Semitic, they were jumped on as having no sense of humor. Bigotry has existed in this forum for quite some time and is a by-product of the way Joe and Max choose to run Mudcat.

One of the consequences of such an "open" forum is that some of the folk music experts who used to be around Mudcat are no longer here. Or, they come by with much less regularity.

The bigotry here has caused several folk music websites to remove their links to Mudcat.