I covered that point (or thought I did!) with the second sentence in my GP comment. The issue is what it does to us as a community. That's significant.
Comment in question concerned what the poster personally experienced, which clearly wasn't a pleasant/positive one. If you want to demand he prove he met Feinstein in person, well, that's certainly within your power as moderator and owner of this space.
But as far as what he owes to the community, I think he doesn't have to explain anything of his experience interacting with someone. He interacted with Feinstein, his takeaway was she is a "senile moron". I for one won't fault him for that, but you obviously have a different take and that's fine.
As an aside, the fact you flagged my comment as well implies very dark things. It is perhaps better I take my leave because I have no interest in enabling such matters. Though it does sadden me, in a deeply ironic way, that an American entity subscribes to such things. People have died to protect the right to speak ill of those in power.
Here, I rewrote the parent comment with a set of substantive points rather than namecalling. Same message, but much more constructive in nature.
“I met her in 2003, along with her aides at a party I was invited to (in a fluke) in Palm Springs.
She was ignorant of tech and science then, and now she's the same but more senile (as happens with age). Her aides, who ended up hanging out with me all weekend, were a perfect illustration of the classic trope of donor class kids who weren't that smart but got into ivy League schools by legacy admissions. Zero intellectual curiosity, super aware of social status, everything they said seemed preplanned and inauthentic.... Just left me feeling gross.”
I don’t think ‘dang would have had an issue with that wording. It doesn’t take much to be substantive rather than resorting to ad hominems; the latter is just easier.
Perhaps I've misunderstood what "flagged" means, then. I've always understood that as an indicator for a comment that you or another moderator found objectional, especially since flagged posts usually get hidden from further viewing. Learn something new everyday, as they say.
Flagging is an ability HN users get after attaining a certain level of karma; flagged posts are generally flagged as such by said users, not by the mods.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html