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.

Counterfeit

We were both heading to Spokane for a conference. This fellow Ron, who by chance had the seat next to me on the plane, hails from Boston, works in media relations. He’s a self-assured, opinionated presence, youngish, a bit of a hipster. He had a David Foster Wallace poking out of his knapsack, like a ship’s prow, and was passing the time by going over with a pencil a short-story draft from a fiction workshop he was taking. He paused now and then to chortle at the inadequacies of his absent classmate.

“Read this,” he said giggling, pointing at one particular howler. After I nodded and smiled appreciatively, we conversed for a while. It was October, playoff time, and he—amiably slumming—professed to be part of Red Sox nation, a diehard fan. He told of cruising through Cambridge after the last out in ’04, the year the Curse was lifted. What it was like to be in the streets, how he high-fived an overexuberant drunk leaning out of a taxi and almost had his arm taken off. What a scene!

Pretty soon, though, his story started to unravel. He couldn’t remember the name of Josh Beckett, Boston’s towering, soul-patched ace—“the big guy, the pitcher” was the best he could muster. And the awkward way he spoke about Fenway—“It’s one of the oldest ballparks in the country”—suggested he’d been there once, recently, and had known nothing of the hallowed grounds before that. I threw him a look, but we moved on to another topic.

It was not until an evening reception a couple days later that my suspicions were irrevocably confirmed. It was the day of Game 6, the pivotal win against Cleveland. Ron, craving attention, piped up about having watched the first few innings in the hotel bar. Boston had jumped out early when J.D. Drew, the underachieving right fielder, uncoiled on a 3-1 fastball with the bases loaded. “It was incredible!” Ron gushed. “The Red Sox made a grand slam!”

Made a grand slam? They made one? There was a moment’s pause. The guys within earshot eyed each other uncomfortably. No one challenged Ron directly on his faux pas: This was a meeting of science writers, after all, some of whom were on firmer ground talking about neutrinos. But from that moment on, everyone knew—I knew, at any rate—that this fellow Ron was not to be trusted.

You said it, brother.

In one of his Lenten retreat talks, Creighton’s Larry Gillick, SJ, quotes Orwell:
“ ‘It’s a tremendous human struggle just to see the things that are right under your nose —’ to become alert and attentive and stay that way.”