Rose and I decorated our living room last night for the holidays, little Santa hats on plants and picture frames, white lights around the doors. For a bit I felt very seasonal and cheery. But then that was gone this morning when I trudged down Fourth Avenue toward the subway, blasted by arctic winds, ruing the day someone decided to invent winter. In general I’d say that I’ve lost a bit of the “Christmas spirit” as the years have gone by. It’s probably just a fact of getting older and having more worries and anxieties gnawing away at my happiness. I just don’t have the time to stop and get swept up in this wonderful season. This is kind of a bummer. But! On the internet this morning there arose such a clatter that it could only mean one thing! Christmas, with all its goodwill towards men, love, and celebration, had come early this year. Yes, my small heart grew three sizes when I read the following sentiment:
GEEZ... BLACKS AND HISPANIC'S F*CKING LIKE RABBIT'S... WHERE'S THE SURPRISE...??
THE KIDS ARE JUST DOING THEIR BEST TO EMULATE THEIR PARENTS AND INCREASE THE NUMBER OF SINGLE PARENT HOUSEHOLDS...
Um, yeah. It came from commenter FshHnt 21 on an AOL.com story entitled First Rise in U.S. Teen Births Since '91. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I do read AOL often. Why I started, I’m not quite sure. But it’s comments like that that keep me coming back. Friends and coworkers have always been baffled when they see me trawling the site, looking for the most hideous thing possible. Generally I can only stomach about 15 minutes of it. I guess I just think that there’s some inherent value in exposing yourself to the worst kinds of argument and ideology. Know your enemy!, I suppose. So if you are ever in the mood to get nice ‘n angry, go to AOL and read the comments. They usually manage to turn an article about a loaf of bread into a debate on why gay people need to rape children to live.
Merry Christmas!
5 comments:
I generally can't even look at comments on other sites. I once acidentally stumbled into a comment thread on Time Magazine about Andrea Yates (who drowned her 5 kids) and the fury and verbal violence directed at a poor woman who is clearly ill...and when I said that, I got flamed with radioactive sanctimony. Never again. Which is why I enjoy Gawker, btw. The comments veer to the silly, and there is the likes of Krucoff, et al. And while I'm not kidding myself that those people are my friends, there is some strange little community there. And most of the commenters are well informed and bright (now Jezebel, somebody's going to have to wander over there and put down a few hundred roach motels.
Do you and Rose refer to yourselves as Harold and Maude? Because I'll bet other people do. Behind your backs.
Wow, thanks for the tip!
It only found took me 30 seconds to find this over there:
http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/11/29/muslim-girls-choose-scouts-over-vagina-monologues/
And that's not even a comment!
From the comments:
"The BTK (bind, torture, kill) killer was a married man with children, was elected president of his churches' congregational council, and, strangely enough, A CUB SCOUT LEADER."
For sheer stick-a-fork-in-my-eye-to-distract-myself-from-the-intellectual-agony-ness, nothing beats the comments on PerezHilton.com. Um, not that I would ever read the comments on PerezHilton.com.
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