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Read other letters about this article
I enjoy reading the letters as much as the articles, even some of the abusive ones (Locutus springs to mind - often abrasive but funny, intelligent and to the point). Salon should welcome these because they attract readers almost as much as the articles themselves.
It's a good point made by others that writers like Sidney Blumenthal get little feedback because of the magisterial authority of his writing, whereas some other writers can attract a lot of often well-deserved flak. But it's also true that some threads, even supposedly 'factual' ones, do just degenerate into chaos. For example, the response to any article making vaguely critical observations about Israel is guaranteed to end in a welter of ridiculously polarized views, unanswerable and selective pseudo-erudition, and wild accusations.
But this is a good thing as it shows not that there's anything necessarily wrong with the article, but that there's something wrong with people's understanding of the issues and Salon is right to highlight it.
