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Late Evening Open Thread: Vituperative Blogs, Bosnians Take Issue with Clinton’s Snafu |
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Willow Bay talks about civility in the blogosphere over at HuffPo:
With a click of the “Post Comment” button, Netizens can quickly bring down the level of dialogue. Bloggers lob zingers, commenters trade barbs, and bullies target kids in the cyber schoolyard. Mudslinging–a time-honored political tradition–thrives on the Web. And trafficking in the bilious and the vituperative has become big business. In an era in which making noise is essential to standing out and breaking through the clutter, naughty will, by definition, win out over nice.
Although she later acknowledges that the whole Web isn’t like this, that “For every foul-mouthed rant, there are thousands of message boards where collaboration is the order of the day.” Arianna Huffington herself wrote that it’s hard work to make the conversation civil.
The NY Post reports (I hate to be citing the NY Post, but h/t to HuffPo for it) that the little girl who greet Hillary Clinton during her 1996 trip to Bosnia is insulted at Clinton’s claim that she had to evade sniper fire. The girl, now 20 year-old Emina Bicakcic, a doctoral student, even had time to read a poem to her, the first words of which were ironically “Peace has come.”
What’s on your mind around this time o’night?
