Comments welcome

Salon had a Mother’s Day column from the uber-hip writer-mom Annie Lamott. The intensity of the negative response shouldn’t have surprised me. People unloaded all sorts of vitriolic baggage on poor frizzy-haired Annie, accusing her of being a whinging, self-pitying, spineless, exploitative, hippie back-scratcher, and piled in tales from their own more successful parenting experiences. The tone was downright hostile, the behavior shark-like, as the first wound inflicted seemed to inspire imitators until there was nothing left but bones sinking to the bottom.

Two elements bear, I think. One is Lamott’s own (to some) insufferable persona. The other is the topic. Witness the Tiger Mom flap and a thousand others, mothering confessionals bring out the raging insecurity in all of us. But what caught me was the corrective effects these comments had on me.

I had read the piece through casually, lulled by its felicity and humor, and come to the end of it identifying with much, thinking even of passing the link on to L. But moving on to the comments kind of slapped me awake. Yes, the nastiness was in places excessive (in others humorous), but in many cases the point was well taken. I found myself agreeing with the trend of the commenters, changing my mind.

Is this a measure of my own lack of conviction? Maybe, but it’s also an illustration of the value of online commenting, rough and tumble though the exchanges may be. It is also a source of trepidation—and, optimistically, tempering—for me as a writer.

I have had one directly hostile letter to the editor sent my way in all my years of writing articles. Not even hostile, really, just crossly critical. My response? I was incensed. How dare this benighted fogey criticize what I had written? Given the chance to respond, I laid into the guy full-force, lavishly indulging my rapier wit, safe in the knowledge that I’d have the last word—in that issue, at least. Afterward I felt like a jerk, as I so often do.

The shoe’s on the other foot.