The Sad State Of Online Comments


	The Sad State Of Online Comments

Elisabeth Eaves

4-27-2009 9:42 AM

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Elisabeth Eaves says:

"Sweetie," "dear," and "zionist stooge liar." Virginia Heffernan, writing about foreign affairs columnist Ann Applebaum, sums up the quality of discourse going on in the reader comment sections of most news sites.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/b01e8b2a-8832-4d28-85a1-9f45aa480364/DAE6AEB1-6F1B-4761-971A-323C88313DF8/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=%22virginia%20heffernan%22&st=cse#" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=%22virginia%20heffernan%22&st=cse#" style="font-size: 11px;">www.nytimes.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=%22virginia%20heffernan%22&st=cse#"><P>What commenters don’t do is provide a sustained or inventive analysis of Applebaum’s work. In fact, critics hardly seem to connect one column to the next. In spite of Applebaum’s hard-to-miss hints that she celebrates Christian holidays (“On Christmas morning, my husband found a CD of ‘The Greatest Speeches of All Time’ in his stocking”), conspiracy-minded commenters insist that she’s Jewish and that her Jewishness determines her politics. And even though she makes it plain that her worldview coalesced when she was reporting on Eastern Europe in the ’80s and ’90s, commenters almost never address the intellectual consequences of her analogies between the cold war and the war on terror.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=%22virginia%20heffernan%22&st=cse#">Someone should be paying more attention, especially since online newspaper commenters as a whole seem to have (at least) the stamina, drive and spare time to become a cogent part of online journalism. But as it is, online commentary is a bête noire for journalists and readers alike.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/DAE6AEB1-6F1B-4761-971A-323C88313DF8/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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