I'm just imagining it of course, but I do think that my responses to the flame throwers on the local newspaper website have been consistent in one way: Everytime I post something thoughtful, it ends up being the last post.

Why is that? Why aren't there any people out there who read the online newspaper who will say, "Nice post, doublygifted." or "why do you say that?" or "I disagree, but I hadn't actually thought of it that way" or another civilized way of continuing to learn from one another. 

 Of course, it must be because the flame throwers are expected to come back out and throw another  bombshell back at me, but I am beginning to think that other explanations might be equally worth considering: That I am partly correct and flame throwers don't do "Well, perhaps" all that well. Or maybe it is just that I am the last to the party, having been all "over the map" with my total online obsession during times like these.

 I wondered recently if I missed the old days, when Compuserve was the only place, or Prodigy, or the BBS or whatever it was that came first. Even this site, evolved as it has from Salon.com's table talk and the first blog site ever created to my knowledge, the beautiful Radio Userland platform that was just complicated enough to keep those flame throwers from having the intellectual wherewithal to throw much of anything.

I don't. I love the fact that you tube can now be streamed on the side wall of a building in NYC, or on an iPad. And that's what gives me so much confidence that this time it will stick. I think that the generations who came home in the late 40's to give "rise" to the baby boomers who then had to endure the forced shutdown of their hopeful new world by greed, media microfocusing, and the megaphone of NO, or NOT YET, or NOT NOW, or NO  Way Jose, or any of the other cut to the quick messages that this ailing media machine still thinks will hold it up.

The media is the message. And the media savvy millenialls have nowhere else to turn, they know what their idols were saying when we were still trying to find the right buttons to push, and they are going to be just fine.

Thank you, very much.