I do hope you're hanging in there, especially with regards to the medical issues you mentioned previously.

And not to sound trollish or anything, I'm just suggesting that what you find on these pages of Salon is a lot less worse that what you'll find up and down the block you live on, whether in Memphis or San Fransisco or the Jersey Shore. Humans are a goofy lot, and the lot on the planet today are probably way smarter than previous generations. Scary thought, isn't it? At least here online it's just words, just a place for all kinds of people to vent. Even the trolls say something witty now and then, and even those who generally write well say something really dumb every once in awhile. My attitude is to embrace the goofiness; for to have it otherwise would truly be dull, if not outright frightening.

Best wishes!

First, what does "libtard" have to do with downs syndrome? I honestly don't make the connection. All I know it as is a pejorative term that righties use for lefties. I meant no offense to anyone other than myself by using it.

Quick quiz: What is better for America? traditional family values or Al Sharpton??

You're going to have to define just what you mean by "traditional family values" before I could possibly give you an answer.

If you mean gay bashing, fetus loving but child abandoning, government in my bedroom, corporation coddling, pollution spewing, religion dominating, military adventuring, poor hating, rich loving, hypocritical, anti intellectual, young earth believing, atheist hating and single mother bashing values, then I'll take Al Sharpton in a New York minute.

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil; – that takes religion.”—Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg

I've taken short breaks to restore my personal balance in response to a number of letters taking various forms of money, education and privilege for granted. I don't live on a coastline; I live in Memphis, and bless me, most of you guys are outta touch with the way the middle of the country lives. I'm a yellow-dog Democrat, and these are the letters which give me insight into why Republicans fear liberals.

People who take money, privilege and education for granted, people who hate other people because of the way they look and people who knowingly spread disease for their own benefit aren't really liberals even though they may call themselves that.

Have you ever been to DemocraticUnderground.com? I think you might be more comfortable there than here even though the signal to noise ratio is lower there than in this forum. Lot's of me too and yea team type posts but for the most part they are good folks and true liberals. DU is fairly heavily moderated so personal attacks are at a minimum. The candidate threads get pretty caustic sometimes and anything to do with anti smoking gets pretty hairy so it's best to avoid those threads if you are sensitive.

There are good people everywhere. My wife is from NYC and she's as good a liberal as you will find. I'm a libertarian liberal and my political positions are almost identical to the Dalai Lama, which I just found out this evening to my great surprise.

If you would like to know just where you fall on the political spectrum I would strongly urge you to take the test at the URL below, I found it most informative. That's where I found out the Dalai Lama and I are political twins.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/index

I'm a former Vietnam Marine turned hippy and I just had a huge fight on Balloon-Juice.com which is a blog which used to be righty but has turned lefty over the last year or two because the owner has become disillusioned with the far right neocon agenda. The fight was over my stance that we should stay in Iraq as long as it takes to bring peace to that country. The reason I take that position is that it is dishonorable to deliberately destroy a country under false pretenses and then walk away and wash your hands like Pontius Pilate. The Marine part of me believes very strongly in honor and it grieves me more than I can say to see my fellow liberals acting in what I consider a dishonorable way. Hippies are also ethical people and the hippy part of me also thinks we should stay in Iraq until the job is done because they damn well deserve it after what we have done to them. I was really surprised by the way I was treated by my fellow liberals because I had a difference of opinion with them. I was ridiculed, cursed, called a troll and a concern troll and generally disrespected but I never replied in kind. I guess human nature is really the same no matter whether you are liberal or conservative. If you are at all interested in my confrontation with my fellow liberals you can read it at the URL below, be warned that it is over 400 posts long but it happened over the course of this afternoon and evening.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=7848#comments

I, like you, am partially disabled and I spend most of my days on the intertubes learning and writing. Unlike you I rather enjoy confrontation at least online and I particularly like it when people get rude and abusive because that means that they have no rational argument against my positions. I had one guy in a real lather today and I found it most amusing to see him flail about and froth at the mouth because he couldn't best me or provoke me to anger.

It's way beyond time for me to go to bed now, so I shall say farewell and godspeed to you. I wish you well and hope that maybe I have brightened your day just a little.

Take care

One of the big problems I have with your contention about journalists pulling their punches is this: before the advent of the internet, journalists pulled their punches all the time. For a more modern example: all the reader feedback in the world didn't stop the Punditry from going 99% for the Iraq war where the anti-war point of view was put on the shoulders of say, Michael Moore. Because you have people on both sides screaming at you, you can take comfort in the idea that no matter what position is the accurate one, someone will agree with you. Where that doesn't happen it's often because there's a flaw in your logic or argument and you need to go back and correct it. I think wimps shouldn't go into journalism or punditry. At least, not that kind.

Does Wikiality stifle creativity? I really don't see how. I'm not entirely sure how you'd get loads of creativity into journalism without sacrificing content to the demands of style. Sure you can do it, but (again unless you're a pundit) journalists deal with communication of data. It's far more important to get that data across than to wrap it up in ribbons.

If it's creativity you worry about, you can write in anonymity all you want on the internet. Millions upon millions of barely trafficked blogs, sites like Fanfiction.net and so on attest to this. The criticism comes when you become big enough to matter. With Great Power comes Great Responsibility. How often is Responsibility fun? You are in a profession where you wield incredible power, and until a few years ago it was largely consequence-less. Unless you had those people writing 20-30 letters how often did editors and publishers check to see if the story was accurate after you got initial sourcing? Only if someone powerful complained I'd hazard a guess. I'm not saying there was no accountability, I'm saying that you (collectively) got a lot more leeway than you should have.

Is it as good as what came before it? Absolutely. That's why Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica. If you have to know that your words will be held up to scrutiny and criticism it's a huge deterrent to acting like a belligerent dick. The knew paradigm is a lot like the Socratic method in law schools: learning by fear of public humiliation.

But here's the bottom line: I think the criticism will ease over the long term when journalists and pundits internalize two ideas: You Need to Earn Your Spot, You Can Never Earn Your Spot.

You are probably not smarter than me, you are probably not better than me, your position comes from a confluence of factors from the decision you made to study something or do something in school to the opportunities afforded you by your social situation. Couple that with a lucky break that helped you break into the business of journalism and that is why you are where you are.

In other words: I could very will fill your spot given different circumstances. This means no journalists are entitled to anything. They must always Earn Their Spot.

But you can never actually Earn it. Like the rest of us, we have jobs and followings as long as we continue to prove we are worthy of them. Screw up enough and your readers leave you, or you get fired etc. The entire process starts anew every morning. Among the Pundit classes especially it has become abundantly clear that they believe they have long since earned their posts, that perhaps even getting into the Pundit Class was their proof of ownership. (I am here, therefore I deserve to be here!) But they're wrong. Each day starts the process again. The most you can do is constantly be in the Process of Earning Your Spot.

If readers know you are aware of that, the vast majority will not troll and flame you, at least, they'll do it in a way that is less monkey-throwing-feces and more heckling-a-stand-up-comic.

Well, I've made a few good points, rather more redundant ones (because you wrote an excellent article) so I guess I'll go off to do some Wikipedia editing.

MNPundit