The Washington Post has shuttered the On Parenting blog. Blogger Brian Reid, in the course of four years of writing posts that he says came out to twice the length of the Great Gatsby, announced his departure on Monday.

Of course, WaPo has a history of sheepish blog-kills. A few years back its popular Post.blog was killed, of all things, for the volume of hateful comments (if that was what decided a blog’s fate, TIME’s delightfully vicious Swampland, where my first post was greeted with a chorus of  ‘who the hell are you’, would have died a thousand deaths by now). More recently, liberal blogger Dan Froomkin’s departure left him “terribly disappointed” and left Andrew Sullivan claiming that Froomkin’s opposition to torture might have cost him his job.

Does anyone know what happened over at On Parenting? Did Brian take a firm stance against torturing children?

The good news is that he will be back doing his own thing over at Rebeldad. As Mainstream Media types ourselves, we look forward to what he’ll do now that the corporate shackles are off.