Comments, part 3

They aren’t always antagonistic. There are sites in which the interchange between writer and commenters rises to the level of community. Comments are supportive, enriching, additive; they cast further light. Indeed, the distinction between “writer” and “commenter” is blurred as commenters move from being fans toward being equals. The comments may be more substantive, and more interesting, than the original communication.

The best example of this type of community may be Andrew Sullivan’s blog, now on the Daily Beast. Sullivan consciously sees himself as blogging for “his people,” an intimate audience. He digs stuff out and puts it in front of them. His interests guide the conversation, but their comments—incorporated into the blog proper rather than relegated to a comments section—are often, even usually, the bulk of a given post. Sullivan is like a conductor, inducing and choreographing opinions around his own. Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic is the same way.

Dick Cavett’s blog at the NYT is more of a fan community; there are lots of paeans to the master, and nobody sees him/herself as a peer. The vibe is lots older, but at the same time, the comments he attracts are substantive, insightful, witty, well crafted. New Yorkers, private-school grads. Again, he sees himself as the maestro, and it’s as if they don’t want to disappoint him.

Bittman’s, when it ran, was of similar quality. There was lots of interesting stuff there, stuff you wouldn’t want to miss. (The comments on Cavett’s are so voluminous, in addition to being so choice, that they actually become a burden.)

What do these blogs have in common? Each begins with a recognizable personality, someone people know and like to read. So it begins in good will. The right-wingers who heckle and bully don’t go looking for these sites, or they are kept off. Then there’s a reaching out, a willingness to connect and converse, a recognition of community and a fondness for it on the part of the ringmaster. The desire is to converse, to share, not to hector. There is a mutual respect, a real feeling of community, and it keeps community members coming back.

...and Mr.Hyde

The other side of commenting, of course, is the opportunity it presents for bullying. Freed of the obligation to name himself, a commenter can indulge his inclination toward abuse. And boy, do they ever. And boy is there a lot of anger out there, balanced on tripwires. And yes, most of them seem to be men.

They swarm like bees at every utterance of Will Bunch, the lefty Daily News columnist, impugning his motives, manhood, allegiance and intelligence. Some of them clearly aim to provoke. One of Bunch’s more satisfying tactics is that he is not provoked. He will very occasionally respond to a comment, but always with humor, a light all-purpose sarcasm. He never rises to the bait. They always do.

There’s entertainment value in that. Still, to scroll on and on through the numbing chatter can only be depressing. Who knew there were so many crude, angry, abusive, and unthinking people breathing out there in the ether? Reflexively they rattle off the same angry talking points, berating each other as much as their host, a mob of bare-knuckle midgets spoiling for action.

More depressing still are the defenders of the faith, self-appointed attack dogs of the Catholic right who see it as their mission to bring down any whisper of modernism, never mind progressivism. They are as unpleasant as they are certain, and they too will trot out the same unthinking responses from the dusty sets residing in their closed-off minds. I am only a little bit unfair to these trolls, most of whom will drag down and muddy in the name of love.

Maybe it’s my selection of sites, but it seems to me that this crude bullying is predominantly a tactic—the tactic—of the right. It’s what these “foot soldiers” have been taught and learned from each other. It’s how they’ve been encouraged to fight back.

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.

Who needs it?

“Facebook is insidious.” That’s what my old friend Roger says. I’m not sure he isn’t right.

I’m on Facebook. I see its value, in connecting me with distant friends, allowing me glimpses of their lives. I’ve learned of deaths and pregnancies, illnesses and awards, affinities and pet peeves. I’ve learned a lot of things I never would’ve known. It’s nice to feel connected.

Too often, though, I’ve been annoyed by political harangues and hot air, and by people who feel the need to broadcast everything, filling my wall with boasts on their kids and pictures of their knitting and chain-letter nonsense.

It feels weird to have conservations on Facebook that used to take place in the relative privacy of email: a back-and-forth with one person to which any number of others are privy. I feel exposed, and like a voyeur when I follow such conversations between others.

Mostly, though, I experience Facebook as a facilitator of envy. Tina’s wall-to-wall coverage of her latest world travels, Doug’s paeans to the weather in Hawaii, where he just got a new job, Benji’s photos of the zillion-dollar estate she’s selling, Lanse’s descriptions of his new success as an artist... The carefully presented facades and accomplishments, the temptation in response to puff myself up into something I’m not. It’s high school gossip all over again.

The best gauge is this: Almost every time I get on Facebook, I get off feeling roiled and un-peaceful, envious or superior or just annoyed, but less grounded, and less content with my life than before I got on. These days, therefore, I mostly stay away.

Back to Cali

East Coast born and bred, I am always surprised by the friendliness of southern Californians. I react suspiciously, and then, ashamed of myself, I let my guard down probably too far.

The ringlet-headed Adonis who brings my bags to my motel room, the suntanned senior citizen who delivers my rental car: why are they smiling? Why are they happy? Why do they seem to be genuinely interested in what brings me to San Diego or La Jolla or Riverside?

Are they hustling for tips? I’d tip them anyway, just out of my overriding Eastern fear of doing something wrong—and I believe that they can smell this. Nor is there anything particular about me that would attract attention or stimulate sudden affection: I’m not a pretty girl, or a recognizable face. Why are they being so nice?

It seems to be just the norm out here, and probably I should know this—It’s no doubt a mark of my lack of sophistication that I don’t have a good handle on this thing called Western manners or California openness or whatever people call it—but still I wonder, where does it come from? What is the cause of it? When did it begin? Is it entirely a function of climate? Of geography? (Are people in Fresno and Indio as friendly as their counterparts in Laguna and Newport Beach?) Did it arrive with the gold rush? Is there some other cultural component at work?

Sometimes I think that these are the most American of Americans, suffused with optimism and tolerance, sun-kissed and feeling fortunate, living in paradise, suspended, not wanting the dream to ever end. Who can blame them? Open the motel-room door to go get breakfast and you’re blinded; you stand there blinking like an owl. As your eyes adjust, your spirit soars: Can the sky really be that blue? Can the breeze be that caressing? Is that sparkling swimming pool for me to use? How could this day not be sensational?

The stories were told of easterners (writers especially) being ruined out here, losing their bearings and their intensity among the Lotus Eaters. It’s easy to imagine. It’s easy to feel when you’re out here on assignment or vacation, and the sun warms your forearms, and you catch a whiff of eucalyptus as you cross the fresh-paved parking lot to an open-air cappucino bar where a blond-haired barista, suntanned and immaculate in her fifties, beams you a dazzling smile.

But at night in your room with the TV blaring, or sitting cramped on the plane ride back home, as you reflect on the traffic and the smog and the astronomical cost of living, don’t you wonder how people can relax out here at all?

How can they afford to be so mellow? Is the culture of the Sun so overwhelming?

The return of Fall (food)

In unconscious synchrony with the autumnal equinox yesterday, I made a Sunday pot of pasta e ceci, the original fall soul food.

Eccola: A healthy dose of garlic, sauteed to pale golden in plenty of olive oil. Add two cans garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed. Sautee for five minutes, stirring occasionally, then add three large handfuls of uncooked ditalini, 2-3 bay leaves, and enough water or chicken broth to cover. Stir as necessary, adding water or broth as it is absorbed and adjusting flame accordingly to keep the pot simmering until the pasta is tender. Let enough of the liquid be absorbed al fine so that the result is moist and creamy, but not soupy. Serve in chunky bowls. At table, sprinkle liberally with freshly grated cheese and red pepper flakes. (Even better, drizzle with hot oil.) Mangia!

It’s a hearty meal in itself, of course, but we paired it with a store-bought rotisserie chicken and a nice green salad. A strong unfussy red wine is mandatory.

Too elite to eat meat?

May 8

This locavore business that I’m reading about in the New York Times: Is it just the latest fad? The latest someone wanting to make me feel guilty? That’s a Neanderthal response, I know, but why is this stuff always being pushed by people who have it all? The latest thing to be into. Cause of the week. Forget vegan. Or maybe on top of vegan.

In truth I have long had an affinity for eating local, within reason, as my father would say. I detest the idea of eating apples imported from Washington or New Zealand. But to get so religious and strict about it? Devotees of the “100-mile diet” eat nothing grown further than 100 miles from their homes. That means they deny themselves coffee, tea, flour, wine, in addition to most fruits and a good number of vegetables and God knows what all. Olives, for God’s sake. Olive oil. Anchovies. Gin. Chocolate!!

It’s enough to make you want to turn a firehose on these people. How about a less absolutist response? How about resolving to eat more locally instead of all locally? To eat more consciously? More reverently, even. To use less. Live more lightly.

It seems overwhelming, like it could become a full-time job. I’d rather remain in the dark. How can we live at all except by remaining in the dark? And yet Jesus tells us to do otherwise, to recognize our connectedness.

Here’s another excuse: I could never get Lori and Danny to convert. And: how could we give up the convenience? As it is we can hardly get meals on the table. And how could we afford it? This is what I mean by elitist. Slow food.

Doing something is better than doing nothing, right? What could be done? Buying more produce and meat from local farmers. Patronizing Stone Soup, the farmers’ markets. Participating in the vegetable co-op. Using re-usable grocery bags. Eating less meat. Eating less processed food. Being less wasteful. It would take more time, money, and effort. It would mean a commitment, and giving up convenience.

And why? Because it’s healthier? Yes. To eat better? Yes. But more because it uses fewer resources, and is more humane. To feel better about ourselves? Salve conscience?

Poor people “don’t have the luxury” of feeling guilty over how the chicken they’re eating was treated. This is true. But it also may be true that the reason they don’t have the luxury is that we do, and we exercise it ever-increasingly.

If I’m just doing this to feel better standing next to my eco-friendly, evolved, mature friends, it’s not going to work. (This is also a bad reason to try to write poetry.)

Virginia Tech

I am seeing this now, rightly or wrongly, as an immigrant's story. My heart bleeds for this kid, caught between two cultures, isolated, the question mark. His parents working all hours to make a life. He has no one to talk to, fits in nowhere, and it just spirals downward until he snaps. That these pressures, these traumas, at least aggravated and finally destroyed a psyche that was already fragile. Take this terribly, worryingly, pathologically shy kid, born into a culture that is achievement-driven and ashamed of weakness, make him an alien, isolate him, separate him from his family...

The no-one-reaching-out-to-him, I tend to buy that too. But then his roommates sure sounded like they tried, and longer than I would've done. Still, maybe no one had time or cared enough to try hard enough. (Fr. Flanagan: "There are no bad boys.")

I bleed for his parents, too, and the immigrants' dilemma; the terrible cost. And it makes me feel guilty for how easy I've had it.

But what about the evil that can curdle self-pity? The choice for that?

One of the Korean pastors quoted in the paper had the courage to tell his congregation that the potential for such evil is in all of us, that "I am not so different from Cho. The father of one of the victims had the courage and compassion to call for prayers for Cho's parents, "for they too have lost a son." Some of the VT students had the strength to resolve that "we need to reach out to the loners."

Surely the voice of Christ is from these, and from Lucinda Roy, who noticed the crying behind the sunglasses and tried to help, scared as she was, and not from Nikki Giovanni, who could not see beyond the "meanness," the "weirdness," the "crap," or Leonard Pitts, who wrote "I don't want to understand this pathetic kid."

The Witch is Dead

The horror at Virginia Tech has chased the Imus “scandal” off the stage. I told myself that I wouldn’t spend a moment of my life thinking about the demise of this puerile bloviator, but then found myself drawn to columns by Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, and E.J. Dionne, among others, and a Time cover story on the debacle.

These stories came after the initial wave, and in response to it. There were endless tropes:
--The hypocrisy of the corporations, Imus’s employers, who remained silent until they could gauge the level of public outrage, then cut the guy loose.
--The hypocrisy of those Imus pals who now condemned Imus (again after sniffing the wind) after having profited from “looking the other way” for so many years.
--The hypocrisy of those who crucified Imus for using language that black rappers use, with impunity, every day. (“Prison culture,” one African-American commentator called it.)
--The hypocrisy of Imus’s delayed-onset apologetics.
--The hypocrisy of Al Sharpton.
--The despicable unfairness of a media superstar randomly disparaging a group of heretofore anonymous young women. (This is what “did it.”)
--Imus’s redeeming qualities, grudgingly allowed.
--The frat-boy ugliness at the core of Imus’s act. (Somehow, Imus’s actual physical ugliness—his baleful hawk-like visage, the Wicked Witch of the West in a cowboy hat—was left untouched. There were many mentions of his advanced age and irrelevance.)
--The idea that this incident would or should “re-open” a discussion of race relations in the U.S. (Sure it will.)
--The idea that PC is dead, and there’s something worse in its place: rampant, juvenile incivility. We are Frat boy/Gangsta Nation. Idiocracy.
--The heroic class displayed by the Rutgers women.

I think the most bizarre moment in the whole ordeal was the CNN camera vigil in front of the New Jersey governor’s mansion. Imus had gone there to meet with the women and apologize “privately;” CNN seemed to want to give this meeting the gravity of the JFK funeral. The surrealism was cranked up even higher when it came out later that Gov. Corzine, racing through the Jersey night in his government SUV to make this historic klieg-lighted encounter, had crashed on the Turnpike and nearly been killed.

Second most bizarre were the reports that the right-wing was terrified that this was but the first move in a vast liberal conspiracy to bring down all of talk radio: “Is Rush Limbaugh next?”

Finally, though, I think Slate culture critic Stephen Metcalf summed it up best in trying to account for “the I-man”’s immense popularity over all these years:
“How iced-out in the bedroom and thumbed-under at work are America’s commuters,” Metcalf wrote, “that they find drive-time radio funny?”