The OpenWeb commenting platform (a product deeply inferior to Disqus on the user end) has seen its usual thread positioning under stories on Villages-News.com replaced with a message reading simply “Comments have been temporarily disabled.” The development was deeply disappointing to those among us non-Villagers who saw a letter to the editor headlined “Negative comments about Charlie Kirk cannot be supported by facts” and were eager to see the reactions to the missive submitted by Village of Woodbury resident Mary Sessions, who wrote “When I started hearing those phrases, I decided that I would listen to the whole dialogue and make my own decisions about Charlie’s character. When I did that, the whole meaning of the quote took on a different context and had nothing to do with what he was being accused of. So, I encourage people not to take what they are being told is true without doing some research on your own to get the WHOLE TRUTH!”

Possibly even more heartbreaking was the void underneath “Villagers’ problem child caught with drugs in anus after sentencing,” detailing an unfortunate colorectal narcotic smuggling mishap experienced by 48 year-old stay-at-home son Chad Basford, who’d been checking in for a 180 day vacation at the Sumter County Jail on a conviction for driving a golf cart with a suspended license, a bid imposed due to his record of five DWIs. Jail Personnel found packages of marijuana and a sleep aid “covered in fecal matter and bloody mucous” on the floor after Basford was ordered to squat naked during the standard procedure to check if he was smuggling narcotics in his anus.

No reactions from other Villages-News readers under that one because, as stated, comments have been disabled on the site. Even the non-lurid, non-politically-charged reports like “Bicyclist hit in helmet by golf ball in The Villages” are subject to this moratorium, one for which there has been no timeline of its resolution issued. Whatever prompted it must’ve been pretty fucking good.