Peanut Gallery
Every blue moon I get this masochistic urge to read the Comment section below a news story, you know, see what my fellow citizens are thinking. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a cellphone with text messaging capabilities so I get the digital equivalent of cabin fever, some kind of isolationist feeling that needs assuaging with input from total strangers. I suppose I could go hang out at the mall, but the mall is 40 miles away and I don’t need anything else from a few dozen stores under one roof.
Me and the mizzus watched the ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ last night, the account of Che Guevara before he became a Marxist revolutionary, just a med student who hops aboard a buddy’s Norton motorcycle in 1952 and heads north from Argentina to Peru, pretty much penniless, pretty much at the mercy of the kindness of strangers. So today I wondered what I could find out about Che after this trip. Kerouac headed into the mountains to sit fire watch in the Forest Service towers in the North Cascades. Che went into Cuba and was instrumental in overthrowing Batista.
I found another article after the first bios whose point was that Guevara was a cold blooded commie killer. Fair enough. Maybe a little biased, but hey, free country and all. So then I decided to see what the peanut gallery thought of this article and you can maybe guess, it being political hunting season these days, the decibel level ratcheted right up to eardrum damage levels. Folks have a lot of built up bile is all I can say. Only took a few comments before we got to anti-Obama and Bush-bashing, then the personal attacks on the commenters and finally I thought maybe I’d had enough for the morning.
My father, who usually sends me Tea Party e-mails still questioning birth certificate authenticity and Muslim affiliations, sent me instead a nice group of photos, mostly of cute animals, tulip fields in bloom, artistic shots of dancers, mostly nice fluffy stuff. Not really my cup of herbal tea, but better than the usual vitriol he passes on to ruin my day.
Curious how the Comments would go on beautiful photos, expecting only sappy enthusiasm for the beauty of the shots, imagine my surprise to find the same trolls blasting away at everything from animal abuse to anti-sunset sentiments. Here’s one, I guess in response to some ice skaters in formation: “at the rate the migrants are arriving, in ten years the Italian skating team will be all black.” Nice, attack the refugees and throw in some racism too. Here’s one after the cute picture of the tiger cub: “ I am disturbed and sickened by the photo of the tiger cub in his cage. HOW DISGUSTING THAT YAHOO WOULD POST THIS PHOTO AS JUST A CUTESY PHOTO OF A LITTLE CUB IS ALL THE MORE VILE!!!” Well, it was a picture of a circus animal….
Or this in response to who knows what: “Silly little tart, should have broke her neck.” And: “I’ll bet he’s even worse in bed!” Okay, I don’t have a clue really about what either of these are referencing, but they’re pissed, I get that. What I do know is I’m going to have to ask my old man to quit sending me these cutesy photos. I think I prefer the vitriolic poisonous e-mails. At least they come without further comments.
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