Every day I wake up, stretch, make myself a pot of coffee, and tell myself that I won’t read the comments posted for any news article I read on the Internet. And, then like a conservative Republican who tells himself today is the last day he cheats on his wife, but goes to Argentina anyway, I’m reading the comments left by real life Archie Bunkers and people everywhere who are clearly slacking off at their 9 to 5’s.
I’ve been trying to stop reading those comments because they reinforce my belief that the world is filled by really awful people who should have been aborted. No really, their comments tilt me closer toward misanthropy. The most recent media spectacles–Birthers and the Louis Gates Jr. arrest and subsequent beer summit with the president and the Officer Crowley who arrested him, remind me how sorely many of us who use the techie version of the market place of ideas needs a lobotomy.
We have a bunch of disgruntled people in this country egged on by the likes of CNN’s Lou Dobbs and the truly mentally unstable Glenn Beck, who are convinced that Barack Obama is the secret Muslim that he is and not the President of the United States because he’s not an U.S. citizen and he won’t produce some sort of long-form birth certificate. Whatever. My message to birthers: Doesn’t it just suck losing an election and trying to grasp the idea that for quite possibly the next eight years. the guy you don’t like is going to make important decisions that will affect your life? I know, I know. I’ve been there. I remember the first eight years of 21st century, and it was a difficult time for me with all those preemptive wars, profilgate spending on the things human beings don’t need, and the hacking away at civil liberties all in the name of keeping me safe. Yet, I never (publicly, that is) questioned the legitimacy of your guy’s American citizenship. I mean, the Bushes are as American as obesity causing apple pie and military bases on every continent! The bottom line is that you didn’t vote for Obama and he’s trying to reform your health care (how dare he try to fix a broken system!) and that just makes your blood boil.
And then there was that whole Harvard professor getting arrested in his home and gosh, we don’t really know what happened because, by golly, none of us were there to witness it and those who were there can only report their perspectives on an event that was affected by the historic racism this country thinks we’re getting past just because the electoral college put a black guy in the White House. Any article discussing this situation also invariably had really cute comments about “reverse racism” and people who are convinced that being African-American is the same thing as being a criminal. As I’ve said above, Archie Bunker lives and thrives on the Internet.
So, why do I get angry, annoyed, and misanthropic when I read all those reader comments? I should know that commenters are a small fraction of the world, albeit a mighty motivated fraction, who think their opinions are heady enough for others to see. In some ways, I wonder if I’m all that different from them. After all, I spend time every day reading their thoughts and getting as angry as Rush Limbaugh is at all the reverse racists and wise Latina women. I mean, if the reader comment displeases me, I can read it not, right? No, I can’t. The disgruntled reader/commenter c’est moi. Angry people, annoyed with the world, trying to make sense of it yet powerless to change it, so we write and hope that someone somewhere has a bad day because we said something mean and stupid.
