This is a big f'ing deal

Gordon Crovitz laments the incivility of reader comments on online news sites. While I share his disappointment, to expect otherwise is simply unrealistic.  Incivility is pervasive. Our political leaders behave with unbridled ego and verbally tar and feather opponents with gusto. It's become blood sport. And the pundits in newspapers and on TV and talk radio get paid to take the low road. So why should their customers be held to a higher standard?

Here are some excerpts from Crovitz's Wall Street Journal article, Is Internet Civility an Oxymoron?

"For those of us tempted to hope that new technology might improve human nature, the Web has proved a disappointment. The latest online reality: comment sections so uncivilized and uninformative that it's clear the free flow of anonymous comments has become way too much of a good thing.

"Part of the problem is that people who conceal their names seem to feel free to say things they never would if their identities were known. There are obvious cases—dissidents living in authoritarian countries—where anonymity is needed. But as Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote recently, message boards dominated by anonymous comments often become 'havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.'

"The Web is a great liberator, giving millions of people the ability to offer opinions with the ease once reserved for, say, newspaper columnists. The downside is that comment overload and anonymity create more noise than wisdom. Since it's now clear human nature hasn't improved with the transition to digital media, we should cheer efforts to make it as easy for readers to decide which commenters to trust as it has become to post the comments."

Check out The Washington Post's dot.comments blog by Doug Feaver. He actually blogs about the paper's commenters and what they have to say. It's one way to reward and encourage people to play nice in the sandbox.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton, the man whose wife launched a thousand ships by coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" while he had sex in the Oval office with an intern and then lied about it to a grand jury, is once again wagging his finger at the nation, telling us in a New York Times op-ed,  What We Learned in Oklahoma City, to "assume responsibility for our words and actions." I know he means well, but really.

"We are again dealing with difficulties in a contentious, partisan time. We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged."

Echo chamber? How about glass house?

The New York Times smartly turned off the reader comments option on Clinton's editorial.