Heh, brickbat. Very well said.

"Then Al Gore invented the internet" is obvioulsy a joke, perhaps the only funny thing in this very dull article. God, I can't belive I'm responding to you. I need to get a life. I am going to crash right off this information super highway...right...now.

Kamiya spends half of one paragraph on the REAL reason why so many publications are going with open letters forums - click-throughs. Post a controversial article that pushes buttons and one can expect a tidal wave of cash to wash over one's publication, as dozens if not hundreds upon thousands of readers click through ads to post their outraged opinions. So as Kamiya also pointed out, if there is a danger the danger lies with editors who are accountable to their publishers. It's true that thoughtful, well-written articles and essays draw few letters, and so going forward the temptation will be to tabloidize everything. But that's a choice that publishers and editors don't necessarily have to make. Slate doesn't have an open letters forum, and it's doing just fine. No one with the heft of Hitchens or Kinsley or Weisberg is getting published at Salon, so it's clear where lie the priorities of Salon's managers.

Today's article on Annie's Mac and Cheese is a good example ... a fairly "safe" topic ... "debunked" with a healthy dose of snark ... until you read the letters.

I was put off by some gratuitous snark in the article and by the "low hanging fruit" quality of the subject, but I found the letters very interesting ... there was a great deal the author missed out on, skipped, ignored, etc.

Like the "Al Gore invented the internet" line in this article or Stephanie Z's blithe dismissal of major artists, Aylet's generalizations from her personal experience to the universe, Fareed's contemptuous dismissal of serious muckrakers, some of Annie Lamott's flaky "lessons learned", etc. --- these things BEG rebuttal and/or a reality check.

Also, how self-serving is this idea that "less than civil" letters should be somehow blocked/partitions/clearly labeled? ... to what purpose? To protect the writer's feelings? Huh?

Most letterwriters are civil ... the biggest problem I see is letterwriters attacking other letterwriters, which over on HuffPo (irrc) and TVWOP win deletion and often a temporary lock on additional submissions (a cyber time-out).

Any writer who thinks that the letter are directed to them is misunderstanding the format ... probably 80% is a "my two cents" rolling blog. It's not hard to tell the difference and to skip the trolls, the flakes, the nuts, etc.

An "email the author", separate from "letters" might be helpful, if (and it's a BIG if) authors want feedback.

I've been posting online since the days of Atari computers and 300 baud acoustic modems you had to set your phone handset on, I could literally read the the text on the screen faster than my modem could download it.

Fairly early on I realized that the better my post and the harder I hit my mark, the fewer replies I got. As I moved onto usenet and then the internet I found that my observation about replies versus post quality was confirmed.

I really cut my rhetorical teeth on usenet, which makes Salon's letters section look like nap time at the preschool. Everything you write on usenet will be savagely dissected by an army of implacable foes and if your facts aren't documented and your logic isn't up to snuff then you will find out in very short order and usually very rudely.

For quite a while now I've been posting almost entirely for the lurkers, that 80% to 90% of the readers of any given online forum who will either never post anything at all or will only very occasionally post. I don't expect to get very many replies and I seldom do except in the rare case I make an error of fact or logic.

I have a very unusual last name and my full name is unique in the US and probably the world. For this reason I wouldn't like to see full real names required of posters here. Despite the claim of one previous poster that we do not live in a police state, I would like to point out the the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world, bar none.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0818/p02s01-usju.html

Given current trends, I wouldn't be surprised to see the US slip into a form of fascism sooner or later and I don't want anything I write easily and directly traceable to me.

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis

If you don't believe me about incipient fascism in the US, I suggest you go to the link below and read about the fourteen signs of fascism. I think you might be surprised.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=britt_23_2

For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

Much more: