Is it any wonder that people don't respect writers anymore when they continue to peddle elements of the Anti-Gore media war years after they have been disproved? Cracks like that are harmful--does anyone doubt that the press' constant peddling of false "Gore has a problem with the truth" stories contributed to both the Bush presidency and the GENUINE problem with the truth that it has developed.

So basically, if you don't want to be held to account, behave better. That would include not making anti-Gore wisecracks that were originated by an irresponsible press.

and I've generally appreciated the feedback. I wrote the articles to be read, not for the money (bwahhahahah). But what's up with criticizing an author for responding to criticism? It's stupid to stay with the old model of print article responsa.

- that the letters section was a really bad idea. I mean, honestly, 120+ letters, most of them trying to be funny ('oh look at me, I'm writing a snarky letter about the dangers of dumbasses writing snarky letters') on this article alone?

One of my favorite movie scenes ever was in 'Jay and Silent Bob STrike Back'- when they make a million dollars and blow it all tracking down and beating down the people who bad-mouthed them on various internet forums.

What a wonderful, thoughtful and 'well-said' article.

Thank you!

It's true, this online democracy is rough sometimes. I first discovered online arguments through a local BBS. In order to continue, I had to toughen my skin somewhat. And be prepared to apologize or at least restate when I was wrong. I don't think it's changed my views much, but I have gotten to at least partially understand the right-wing perspective.

I've never had troubles with Gary Kamiya, who seems like a fine writer. I don't know about Stendahl, though, Gary. But all this tsuris is worth it if you look on the TIME blog with Ana Marie Cox and Joe Klein. The comments beneath the Klein postings are by themselves worth the price of admission. Well, the gasbag deserves it, and often gets it. And, most endearingly, it just makes him shake his great writer wattles at us.

...the readers of Salon are too stupid to get that the Al Gore reference was a joke, a winking reminder of the right's lie, rather than a promotion of the sentence as fact.

Jeeze, when did everyone stop being able to understand irony?

I'm also a little disappointed that while you've all been bickering about diacritics and umlauts, nobody has caught that it was Spinal Tap's amps that went to 11, not Motley Crue's.

What the hell are they teaching you kids these days?

Maybe in addition to an Editor's Choice star, there should be a symbol for vicious or really stupid irrelevant posts. Like when Heather Havrilesky writes and article and people respond "she's an idiot; she must be a horrible mother". Or, "you don't agree with me? F*** off!" Or my other favorite "You are evilly selfish for wanting to have a biological baby" That way we could filter the worst out.

I really enjoy the letters sections until they get to the nasty personal attacks (on the author or subjects or the other posters). I usually sign off there, which is unfortunate because sometimes the original topic would make for interesting further discussion.

The larger question is why have this unofficial scrivening priest caste known as "The Writer" at all. Why not just have some matrix of a million postings a minute and let readers sift and weigh who's worthy of attention in the first place?

Mr. Kamiya makes a final resort, after a long wordy section devoted mostly to expressing various degrees of hurt about being criticized, to the aesthetics of literary prose. I have to admit, and I hope very sincerely that this isn't too harsh a word, this argument seems a little disingenuous. We're not talking about massive feedback to Richard Powers, or William Vollman, or even Phillip Roth or Martin Amis here; people trying to "take down" big time prize-winning novelists is not the issue. If it were, there would certainly be no need to go into the reams of reader talkback on the internet to come up with examples of gratuitous, even nonsensical nastiness. We have a published author who has served as the main fiction critic of one of our most respected intellectual journals (The New Republic) for that. I'm speaking of course of one Dale Peck; and now there are acolytes of Mr. Peck's in his former chair at that worthy organ of critical sensibility to carry forward the banner of "authenticity," to merit which they feel compelled to blast or kneecap any more -famous or successful author they find insufficiently intense or cool. If it's the infantilization of criticism Mr. Kamiya is worried about, he need look no further than the fellow members of his own "professional" guild. No need to bring in the masses of loudmouth plebes. If the extremely serious editors of America's most serious publication refuse to remonstrate with their own book reviewers (and let's be clear: Mr. Peck and his adepts are invariably inept critics, with a tin ear for language and with no patience for careful, scrupulous analysis), then why should we expect anything better from the hordes at the cyber gates?

In fact the most ruthless opinions about writers are usually pronounced by other writers. I don't think enjoining readers to become more "professional" in their attitude would do anything to raise the tone of feedback culture. Writers are eternally personal in their feelings about criticism and will never be capable themselves of any reaction to someone else's work other than simple love or hate. Everything else is rationalization.

Serious criticism, from people who have time and vocabulary enough to sit with a text and sound it out, puzzle out its aporeia, catch its drift, intertext it, commune with it, has never possessed an audience more than vanishingly insignificant in numbers. One will never increase those numbers by appealing to the kind of intellectual virtues cultivated by a literary milieu that values above all sponaneity, documentary authenticity or compelling (as in entertaining) narrative. The more feedback there is, the harder it will be to find truly trenchant meta-writing; those who are motivated, I assume, will do so. That's the final secret of how the internet is deconstructing the whole idea of a discreet, integral, metaphysically gounded thing called a "Writer": nothing is missing; nothing is lost; everything is preserved and situated and fully present, as long as you're willing and able to dedicate your life to searching.

I did love the quote from "Phineas Finn," one of my favorite books. It's an ironical statement, of course. Every writer, indeed, every public personality loves to see themself as the object of the attentions of others. All protestations to the contrary are but the bitter sighs of lachrymose alligators.