Blog comments

Many blogs allow readers to post comments. It is sometimes instructive to read the comments.  It tells you a great deal about the American public.

I just read a posting on Mark Mardell’s blog entitled “Obama Chooses Gun Control Fight”. It is a good, thoughtful piece.  Then I read a selection of the 381 comments posted to date, which are mostly childish, petulant, ill-informed rants, many going off on rants on other subjects completely.   Many of the comments are snide replies to earlier comments. It reads like what I would expect from a group of ill-educated  5^th grade boys (and the spelling and grammar is about at the same level, too).

Now granted that comment posters are a self-selected group (I almost never post comments), and probably not representative  of the population at large. Still, it is dismaying to see so much shallow thinking, so many knee-jerk ideological reactions, and such childish behavior. 

Truth to tell, much of the social media interchanges seem to be of this quality as well.  It reminds one once again of H.L. Mencken’s comment “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”