2009-02-26: Tiring of tribtalk

Well… I hesitate to say that I tentatively think that I might have possibly decided to stop bothering with writing comments in response to letters to the editor in the Salt Lake Tribune. “Oh!” (I hear you say.) “I didn’t even know you were writing comments in the Salt Lake Tribune.” Well, yes, I was. And sometimes lots of comments. But after taking a bit of a break over the past couple of weeks, I went back the other day, posted a couple of things and decided that I really wasn’t enjoying it.

For one thing, the same old crowd is there (as one might expect). The waves of conservatives vs. the waves of liberals. Both camps have a couple of articulate writers. Given my own political sensibilities, I have found the points of view expressed by the conservative camp — especially the articulate ones — to be singularly misinformed, reliant on very questionable sources.

Some people on both sides of the political divide are inarticulate, semi-literate, frequently rude, and sometimes just downright nasty. I have cringed more than once at some of what “my” side has produced.

But it isn’t that I’ve gotten thinner-skinned. Nor is it the slightly disturbing phenomenon of finding myself praised by some of the most virulent conservative types who dwell in the Trib’s comments section. It is true that I very rarely lose my temper online. It is true that I have a pretty damned good memory for things that I have read and can (and if necessary, do) track down sources. I argue the issues, I provide facts along with anecdotes, I avoid ad hominem attacks, and generally manage to respond “masterfully” to such attacks when thrown my way by those who become furious at the notion that I might not accept their assertions, nor their sources, as reasons to change my mind.

I think I need to spend my time more productively overall. (OMG, when was this not true?) I want to start supplying more writing (as in diaries, for example) to sites such as DailyKos and a few other places where my thoughts and even my artwork might get more traffic. It would be nice to think that people might start coming to the mofembot site from efforts expended on dkos and all, but I need to have more content here to make it worth their while to stop by.

As for my book (on the nonlynnear site)…. Well. I got some feedback the other week that I’ve been pondering about, with the net result that my project has come to a screeching halt. (I think I’ll write about this more on the nonlynnear blog rather than here.) Suffice to say, however, that I am no longer going to spend much if any time over at the Trib. The people who hate and fear Obama will continue to hate and fear him no matter what I may say in the comments. (And yes, I’m well aware that the “real” audience is not those who are arguing in the comments, but those who read the comments; I guess I have to wonder just how many people that ends up being. I’m pretty convinced that the traffic is quite light overall: after all, people who actually subscribe to the physically-delivered paper are not especially likely to look at the online version; and while there’s a hard-core group of about 30 or so fairly regular commenters (based on the number of thumbs-up and down), I just don’t see that the traffic warrants continued investment on my part.)

I reserve the right to change my mind. I will say, however, that commenting in the Trib has at least gotten me to write something about political and moral and religious issues on an almost daily basis, and I have culled my comments each month — not just so as to preserve my Sterling Prose in its entirety, but also to serve as a possible basis for longer pieces (whoa, maybe some pages herein!) about issues I care about.

As the French say, On verra. (We shall see.)


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