Jezebel’s Anna North’s post brings into stark relief how certain segments on the right are using fear and intimidation to create a chilling effect over media content. As North summarizes, I was booked to discuss Sarah Palin’s Alaska on the official TLC podcast after Sunday night’s latest episode of the show. Then, I was abruptly uninvited from podcast because, as its host and social media strategist said, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska is not a political show” and my presence would have made the conversation — about a series-long unpaid political advertisement for the former GOP vice presidential nominee and potential future POTUS candidate — “inadvertently political.” (Yep, I know. I deconstructed that fun little bit of irony yesterday, as did Media Matters.) But, as North writes, that official explanation wasn’t the whole story. In fact, “organizers were worried about what Palin supporters might do if they got too riled up.”

Jezebel asks if my segment’s cancelation was “because the organizers of the show can’t handle anybody even mildly badmouthing Palin? Well, not exactly.”:

In a post about the Pozner incident, the show’s social-media strategist Brian Reich wrote, “We canceled the interview because our planned conversation became, perhaps inadvertently, political.” As Pozner pointed out on her blog, the idea that “I’m just too ‘political’ … for a show about a former Governor and potential future Republican presidential candidate” is pretty ludicrous. But when I spoke to Reich, he acknowledged that “too political” isn’t really the whole story. He explained to me that “the response to her blog post was ridiculously negative — and not negative in the appropriate ways, negative in ways that go way beyond what we’re comfortable with.” He added that ever since a gunman sparked a standoff at the Discovery Channel headquarters in September, “everyone at Discovery and TLC is very anxious about security issues.” So basically, they were worried that if they let Pozner talk on the podcast, a pro-Palin wingnut might try to bomb the building.

When I talked to Pozner about the incident, she pointed out that the network’s fears aren’t unconnected to the content of Palin’s show — Palin is “one of the heroes of the Tea Party,” whose more wacked-out adherents have threatened violence in the past. The show’s also strenuously pro-gun (though as I’ve said, I believe its stance on hunting is actually one of its less problematic attributes). Certainly the left has its nutjobs too, but it’s pretty telling that TLC was worried enough about Tea Party violence to commit the PR faux pas of disinviting an already confirmed guest. Palin’s been famously allergic to criticism of any kind — now it looks like the mere threat of a reaction from her craziest followers is enough to stop that criticism before it even starts.