I have been trying not to post this, preferring the ostrich defence of ignoring them in the hopes that they would go away, but since the topic keeps coming up, here are some of my thoughts:

There actually appear to be three obnoxious regular anonymice:

1) Glenn Sacks fan. Probably the same anonymouse who mostly seems to want BroadSheet writers to respond to him directly, thinks he deserves to debate them mano-a-mano or something. But in the meantime, everything is Glenn Sacks all the time. Has a real hate on for Tracy C-F and Joan Walsh (not that he likes any of the other writers). May also be a dimbulb sock-puppet, though I doubt it (though dimbulb has put up the odd sock-puppet, I am pretty sure). Very fond of preaching about the virtues of anonymity, which he actually doesn't understand. Also has no concept of civility.

2) "Rebuttable Presumption" guy, has been beaten up in the divorce courts and lost custody. He is pretty obsessive, like a lot of men I have met in the same situation. Likely lost custody for pretty good reasons.

3) (TM) Anonymous, who is, I think, a teenager, who likes to hurl insults and invective, and is often conflated with the others, but is actually something closer to a true troll, in that he just likes to pick fights, and admire himself for his (nonexistent) "cleverness."

There are others, but not so frequent. And then we have our little collection of pseudonymed assholes, dimbulb, pj, linney, blunder, etc. But at least we know who they are and can ignore them.

But, the problem with anonymity, is that people think you are all the same guy. And he may well be, with multiple personality disorder, for all I know. Anyway, like any time you enter the worlds of those with mental health problems, pretty soon very little makes sense, and you get as confused as they are.

If you want to communicate, putting a tag of some kind on your message is very useful. It is actually what the internet is built on. So dudes, pick a non-adolescent handle and come on in, the water is fine.

And yes, I really don't understand Salon's moderation policies. Maybe they are trying to encourage clickthroughs or something. Deleting a silly user-name while letting posts that approximate stalking and hate-crime stand? I just don't get it.

"Perhaps most significant, the hardened status quo hinders the Jewish state's eventual acceptance in the Middle East, already a difficult goal."

I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor, with little success. What universe are you living in? A difficult goal? What insanity makes anybody think this is even remotely in the realm of real possibilities? There has always been a nasty streak of 19th Century colonialism about the Israeli project.

And while from an Israeli point of view, there may be a defacto two-state solution in place, but for any Palestinian that idea would be a very bad joke indeed. All that has happened is that Israel has refused to employ & feed its Helots anymore, without relinquishing its iron control of them.

I too am horrified by those comments, but I think it is just one anonymous troll making them.

Mostly, the whole situation is sad. The Israelis have slipped inch by inch down a slippery-sloped vicious circle into horror, and the Palestinians have been degraded into madness. There is no real possibility of peace now, I think. And in the long run, I mean the real long run, demographics and the inevitable ending of the US blank cheque mean Israel is almost certainly doomed. But there's gonna be rivers more blood before that.

I can remember, back in the day, a surprising number of women found Andrew Dice Clay and the MacLean & MacLean shtick actually funny. No accounting for taste I suppose.

The video is actually tame, but very stupid, and pretty far away from the kind of humor that makes me laugh. The rape "joke" was a pretty, hell very, small part of the overall piece.

But yes, I did indeed find it very unfunny.

Now I ass my laugh off to Sara Silverman, so I am no prude, but this went way beyond stoopid, and right into idiot territory.

Good comedy is always on an edge, but there are edges of less value than others. Just sayin.

Now that we have the letters back on, I am expecting the trolls to go just wankers on this one.