Jim Brady and the Blogsphere

Interesting Op-Ed by Brady. Seems his blog got flamed by the left hemisphere of the blogsphere. He still defends blogs as being useful, but he's upset with the vitriol thrown at him by the tin-foil set.

My career as a nitwitted, emasculated fascist began the afternoon of Jan. 19 when, as executive editor of the Post's Web site, washingtonpost.com, I closed down the comments area of one of our many blogs, one called post.blog. Created primarily to announce new features on the Web site, the blog had become ground zero for angry readers complaining about a column by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell on the newspaper's coverage of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. If I had let them, they would have obliterated any semblance of civil, genuine discussion.

I do like his point on incivility being related to anonymity and the ease of the instant gratification for people's rudeness.

This all raises a question: Why are people so angry? It was a mistake, it was corrected. Part of the explanation may be the extremely partisan times we live in. For all the good things it has brought our society, the Web has also fostered ideological hermits, who only talk to folks who believe exactly what they do. This creates an echo chamber that only further convinces people that they are right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but an idiot or worse. So when an incident like this one arises, it's not enough to point out an error; they must prove that the error had nefarious origins. In some places on the Web, everything happens on a grassy knoll.

Another culprit in Web rage: the Internet's anonymity. It seems to flick off the inhibition switch that stops people from saying certain things in person. During the Howell flap, many of the e-mails I received that called me gutless, a coward or both were unsigned.

Well, you came to play in the blogsphere. If you don't like the results, you don't have to play. Personally, I don't take much to heart from vitriolic comments. Not that I get many. Usually those that go to the point of name calling have no point to make in the first place.