I thought about this thread as I fell asleep last night.

Salon has an agenda. It has a very strong slant to the left, and that's okay, that's what brings in most of the readers. Salon, and those lefty readers, can't stand that a lot of slight-right people read the site, and make logical comments which have obviously frustrated all these liberals. They're like, "Hey, this is our space, we're allowed to be as vapidly crunchy as we want, and we don't want to hear what you have to say."

I say: FREE SPEECH. FREE SPEECH. FREE SPEECH. THE LETTERS WHICH PROBABLY PISS PEOPLE OFF THE MOST ARE THE ONES WHICH PEOPLE KNOW (but don't want to know) ARE RIGHT.

This all kind of reminds me of that episode at Columbia when a representative of the Minute Men (law abiding Boarder Patrol zealots) showed up for a speech. Because his thinking wasn't in line with the prevailing chic liberal latte agenda -- the stage was rushed and he was silenced.

Liberals = proponents of censorship

FREE SPEECH!!!! FREE SPEECH!!!

One more time: Liberals have the Daily Show, I have this.

Censor me. I'm obviously not intelligent enough to comment on articles. BTW: Hillary can't get elected, think of something else.

Huh Locutus? What was that about? You do know you're not talking to me right? Someone is obviously writing letters under my name to bust your chops about your earlier "post under any name" letter. If it doesn't have a star, it's not me.

I guess you answered your own question by doing research, but I just wanted to clarify some things for you and/or anyone else who might care...

Basically there's no impact of share price fluctuations in the aftermarket to a company's balance sheet. It doesn't matter to Salon's finances whether the stock is worth $10 or $.01 once it has sold the stock for the FIRST time. That isn't to say that a $.01 stock price is good, but it is more of an indicator of things going badly than it is going to hit the company in terms of cashflow. Now it would impact Salon's ability to raise additional equity, as if it issued additional shares it could likely get at maximum the market price for it.

That is why equity is a good way to finance a company, though. If they had $90 million in debt, they'd have to pay interest on that, and if they didn't, they'd go into reorganization or liquidation. Equity just gives you ownership of a company and the potential to share in future profits (if any).

Salon has taken a lot of investors' money and either flushed it down the toilet and/or produced something that is worthwhile reading, depending on your perspective. Now whether one is getting a good value for that money on a per article basis, is a different question.

Then again, there is a big tradition of people throwing money at media properties despite how much money they are losing--Murdoch and the New York Post comes to mind off the top of my head.

I have a blog, and try hard to write fewer, more thoughtful and well-crafted pieces, rather than a large amount of spontaneous drivel. (I said try.) And I have had readers on occasion tear my writing apart.

It is painful. My average posting takes 3 days and 4-6 hours to write. I work to produce a quality product. I think of my blog not as a rant-and-rave podium but as an art exhibition. And every once in a while a "patron" comes by and urinates on one of my works.

Most web posters are not truly writers. Some even have their grammar down, but they are not writers at heart. Writers-at-heart know that each crafted sentence is a small trace of one's self.

Even I have been tempted to be brutish at times. The internet is simply too immediate a temptation; you can reach through the bandwidth and prick an ego with a bare bodkin and with impunity. Hard to resist, especially because the writer is not present in flesh and blood. It reminds me of that old ethical vignette in which a person is placed in a room with a red button. The person knows if he presses that red button he will get a million dollars. He also knows if he presses it a person in China will die. The conundrum is that the money is immediate and palpable. The person in China is distant and anonymous. Of course the tempation is great.

This whole debate is about decency. It is about realizing that writing is hard, that it is a craft, and that a person who chooses to write something on the net may have put a lot of time into it. That person deserves to be corrected, but also to be treated as a something very valuble -- as someone trying to create beautiful things and release them into the world.

You've demonstrated that little red stars are what you live for. Now could you please explain how you manage to type while kissing Joan Walsh's ass at the same time?

To summarize:

1. I am a writer and it's a craft. You are not a writer. So there.

2. I can choose to not read letters about me, but I read them anyway.

3. My feelings get hurt when I read the letters I didn't have to read but chose to. Now I want to ban them because I lack self-control.

4. When my feelings get hurt after engaging in an activity which I chose to take part in, I sometimes second-guess myself. I blame you.

5. Your letters cannot possibly have any merit. See point 1.

6. I want to be like Dan Perkins or Steve Gilliard and have a blog where I can just ban everyone who disagrees with me. I think surrounding myself with sycophants is good for my self-esteem. (It seems to be working with President Bush!)

Understand that anyone who writes for public consumption, whether they are a prize-winning journalist or novelist, or a lowly blogger or letter-writer, is afflicted with a certain amount of narcissm -- a fervent belief that what one has to say is so very important, that surely everyone else must find it equally as fascinating. Every writer secretly likes to believe that others are reading and enjoying what we write.

The narcissist, by his very nature, is thin-skinned when it comes to criticism. It shatters the fantasy that any of us is of any importance. That's why these forums so often erupt into flame-fests, and the people in them so often resort to righteous indignation. The free exchange of ideas is necessary to a democracy -- and to live in vibrant democracy necessitates being offended and criticized on a regular basis.

The dynamic has always been with us. There have always been writers and critics of writers and diarists and letter-writers. All the Internet has done is amped up the speed and allowed for more anonymity. And we are *all* of us guilty of the narcissism that fuels this engine. To deride the writers of Salon for a disease with which all of us is afflicted is nothing short of hypocrisy.