A significant number of OS writers have told me they have been sparred personal attacks and involvement in OS flame wars because they don't write about controversial topics, particularly politics.
I first joined Open Salon in August 2008. Most of the time my blog subtitle has advocated revolution for a family-friendly America. None of the dustups I have been involved in had anything to do with politics or revolution. I have been disappointed how little attention has been paid to why I am calling for a revolution for a family-friendly US.
If my memory serves correctly, here are the flame wars that have resulting in my taking a sabbatical from OS and stupidly deleting my posts. I would be appalled if this post restarted any of them. We all have different perceptions of the culprits and victims of flame wars.
- My right to delete abusive comments directed at another commenter . Am I a narrow-minded censor?
- My paradoxical defense of that same abusive commenter when he was accused of being a dangerous stalker and threatened with the police and the FBI. At one point I was accused of being him.
- Discussion about Whether Some People Are Too Manic Depressive to Be Tolerated on OS
- Unasked for Defense of Someone Attacked for Her Feminist Views
I confess that in all four cases, I volunteered to fight someone else's battles. In all four cases, I felt that my being an open manic depression made me vulnerable to abusive comments and in a few instances, posts. My 25-year experience with stigma and discrimination may make me paranoid. My running and hiding from OS was influenced by my illness. That is why I have felt in necessary to have an alter ego,
Cassandra Woolf. Cassandra blogs about mental illness and occasionally harrows hell; many of RSG's readers would prefer to avoid her posts. I am not concealing my crazy twin.
My posts on feminism, misogyny, and misandry have evoked excellent discussions, with no personal attacks. I have very rarely deleted a comment, although I reserve the right to do so.
To the best of my knowledge, there has been no fallout, embroiling people who did not comment on my post. The only lasting result was that I changed my avatar, so that the sweet picture of me and my grandson would make my readers notice the grandma and not the Redstocking.
I majored in political science at Fordham. I loved high school debate. For my freshman year, I attended Nazareth College of Rochester, an all-women's Catholic college. My high school guidance counselor would not write recommendations for non-Catholic colleges. Nazareth gave me the most money. I decided to transfer after the Dean turned down my request to establish a debate club: "Something in the nature of women makes in inappropriate to debate with men."
Horrifed, I talked Fordham into admitting me as a sophomore the same year they first admitted women as freshmen. I was the only woman in my political science classes. I love political debate that doesn't descend into namecalling. In high school and college debate, debaters have to debate both sides of the question.
Since most of us are liberals, political posters are often singing to the choir. The terrible polarization of American political debate seems to have made too many of us deaf to people who don't agree with us. Not only the right is guilty of that. Who among us read conservative or Teabagger blogs? Who reads the National Review? I admit I don't. Sneering at the other side's stupidity or communism is not the way to heal our country.
V.Corso
Gerald Andersen
Piper Hoffman
jlsathre
podunkmarte
Jimmy Zuma
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Comments
Regarding the content of your post. Very interesting and I appreciate the inside view as to where you are coming from in this regard. Thank you.
Rated for Openality
People who lack the courage to post their venom in comments then send vicious personal messages.
I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph more. I'm sometimes alarmed at the amount of political intolerance around here between people who mostly share common ground. (I've been guilty of it at least once.) There are people here who seem to live for bullying and derision. What sad lives they must lead.
But the my father raised me to consider most people less intelligent than we were, a very ambivalent legacy. It has helped me escape from the idiocies of obstetrics and psychiatry. very important victories.
It was helpful that some of our misunderstandings were sorted out in private messages rather than posted for everyone to see.
On more than one occasion I've had a liberal friend look at me aghast when they saw me with a conservative paper in my hand and comment "How can you read that!" I try to explain to my liberal friends that I try to keep an open mind.
I've never had the comment come from the conservative direction, but then I live in a liberal state. Same here on OS--it's a liberal site. Most of what I write is spoof news items. When I was spoofing Romney, McCain, Huckabee et al during the presidential campaign, not a peep from anyone. Whenever I spoof Obama or Biden (and Biden is the gift that never stops giving to a satirist), I get all sorts of abuse. It comes with the territory.
The most delicious irony is that many of those people who attacked me for even the mildest joke about Obama a year ago are now some of the Presidet's most bitter critics. I guess some people are only happy when they're miserable.
Con Chapman, I have decided to follow your splendid example.
I confess I read a post on National Review this morning on liberal reaction to teabaggers that seemed more sensible than some of the posts on OS.
You write: "The most delicious irony is that many of those people who attacked me for even the mildest joke about Obama a year ago are now some of the Presidet's most bitter critics." I have had the same experience, but no one has offered me a rueful, "you were right, after all."
If a person can't win an argument without resorting to personal insults or banishments or other childishness, he/she is the big loser.
That accusation was made against me when I deleted comments that attacked a friend's motherhood. I wish I had deleted the comments without mentioning it. There is a significant difference between abusive personal attack and disagreement and debate.
I suspect people are talking about entirely different flame wars. Thank God most of us don't know about most of them and generalize from our limited experience.
Disagreements with the writer's point of view turn into abusive personal attacks of both the posters and commenters with alarming frequency here. Too often troublemakers are allowed to take over the comment thread. I wish the blog's author would be more comfortable to delete posts that are just trolling.
On the other hand, if you delete someone who is a trouble maker, there are anonymous bloggers who will come out of the woodwork to call you names and claim that you delete to avoid disagreement. It has not been my experience that the worst of the clash on OS comes from philosophical differences. The worst comes from people who wear masks and would otherwise be setting people's garages on fire of they could not create a virtual one online.
You write, "The worst comes from people who wear masks and would otherwise be setting people's garages on fire of they could not create a virtual one online." That's a little harsh, but pretty accurate.
You also write:" On the other hand, if you delete someone who is a trouble maker, there are anonymous bloggers who will come out of the woodwork to call you names and claim that you delete to avoid disagreement." I have always wondered how the call to action goes out.
Then you have people writing posts saying they will never read one single word you write because you are an intolerant censor.
One of my favorite political bloggers, ever,
Digby got in right in February 2008:
"I'm not going to allow people to call me a cunt on my own blog. It's just not acceptable. I'm sorry it's so tiresome to hear me ask people not to feed these trolls or if you think it's obsessive for me to ban people who call me a douche twenty times a day, but that's tough.
Save the sanctimonious lectures, everybody. I don't care if you tear each other apart politically in the comments but I'm not going to be anyone's personal urinal. You talk that way around here from now on and you're out. I'm done."
"Sneering at the other side's stupidity or communism is not the way to heal our country."
Agreed. But when people are espousing hate and fear as the central tenets of their belief system, they deserve whatever broadsides come their way. It's not in my nature to remain silent when I see people popping off with corrosive, delusional idiocies, nor do I think we do the national discourse a favor by saying that racism and hatespeak, which are widely espoused on the right these days, should be given a free pass out of a desire to avoid conflict. Conflict is part of politics, and discussion of politics, and it's not in and of itself a bad thing.
At the end of the day, I'm exactly as respectful to people and their beliefs as they've proven themselves to be to me and mine
The very best writing teacher I had was a fiend at discovering sneering in any form in any genre of writing. To her, it was the mark of the not merely bad, but the completely irredeemable. This was the central admonition of what she taught: do not look down upon others, in any way or for any reason.
I am new here and have not experienced any of these particular flame wars. But I was in a chat room a few years back in which I was the target of some vicious personal attacks. These were not political in nature, but I can see that political views can be just as vulnerable to ugly drive-by assaults.
Trolls. It seems they are everywhere.
That is the nature and the effect of polarization. The Republicans are responsible for this and now they are scared of the extremist factions that they have incited and agitated.
Perhaps it's the talk radio mentality, tactics and behavior that is invading written discourse and society in general.
Nanatehay, we agree on this: "I've found though -and I'm saying this as someone who's been front and center in some real doozies - that the most vicious, acrimonious, and destructive conflicts I've seen in Open are usually about anything BUT politics. They're very often personal in other words." I understand why this is so. People are much more vulnerable to what they perceive as personal attacks. Like me, too many last out in anger without being open about how upset they are. You go on to say: "But when people are espousing hate and fear as the central tenets of their belief system, they deserve whatever broadsides come their way." I have ambivalent feelings about this. Do we want to punish them or change their viewpoint?
A year before I met my first husband he was a fervent Goldwater fan. A year later he was planning to apply for conscientious objection. People can change. Fox is not the only cable channel that perpetrates ignorance.
Ladyslipper, what a wonderful teacher you had! I have never had anyone make that point, which was equally as relevant in the late 60s when I attended college.
I have noticed when an occasional conservative posts on OS, they too often are stereotyped and held to account for every atrocity or idiocy perpetrated by anyone who would describe themselves as conservatives. Similar reactions typified my 20s. Nonviolent pacifists and Weathermen were not the same people, even though both might identify themselves as radicals.
Throughmyeyes, you make an excellent point we all need to remember each time we comment: In any forum you can't hear the inflections in ones voice. I've taken something differently than it's been meant to be presented and have found with a few courteous questions you can get an answer." In my personal life, I have never experienced the wrangles I have gotten into on OS (except possibly with my mother and daughters).
Kyle, the reaction to your latest post exemplifies the polarization I am lamenting. Some people seem to believe your audacity in posting on a liberal site earns you attacks that have nothing to do with your viewpoint. You, unlike so many of us, are open to discussion with people who don't share your views. You are capable of changing your mind. I admire you.
Not only are trolls everywhere, but too many of us who are not trolls sometimes act like them.
xenonlit xl, I will never despair of talking to people whose political or moral views differ from mine. I would not blame the Republicans solely.
I suspect we are more isolated from people different from us than my parents' generation. My dad and my uncles all served in the army during World War II and Korea; churches used to have people with a wide variety of political views. Your weekly bridge partners shared your enthusiasm for bridge, not necessarily your politics.
Cable TV news in general, not just Fox, has been the source of so much polarization. When we all watched journalists like Huntley and Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, we had a common political vocabulary. During the 2008 primary, I hated Chris Matthews because of his egregious sexism.
Later, I backchanneled with some people, including yourself to get any feedback I could. Then I finally posted something that got me onto the Editors Pick list.
I'm saying this because too often I think people merely flame F!U! and you're ugly, fat, and stupid to boot kinds of messages. Even if someone really pulls your chimes on a political issue, try to stop and think about what it is you're trying to communicate, and do so in a way that doesn't resort to name calling.
You can see that there were several times when the criticism got quite intense on my posting, and I briefly considered deleting them. But ultimately, I left them online, as I thought they were instructive of what I was dealing with, and besides, I think their comments ultimately led to an expansion of the dialogue. Anyone who goes all the way to the bottom of my post goes through this, and the exchanges act as an exercise that ultimately makes my point.
On the other hand, there is one lady on OS whom I think is no longer here, who was obviously quite insane. I mean that literally. Her anger was so intense and so out of it, that going near her site and even making one posting of any kind would expose you to more abuse than you would want to take in a month.
The bottom line is, that if you're going to post something political, you need to have two things to make a good post.
#1. Knowledge and facts to back up your assertions. Do your homework. Read more books and blog less. And for God's sake, don't watch TV!
#2. A certain sense of intestinal fortitude, i.e. guts or whatever else you want to call it.
Remember. We all have our own telegraph system/radio/TV whatever here. You are broadcasting, so the whole world is your audience.