Racism is one the predominant themes that comes through instead of flu itself. One commenter, obamas_homamas stated: "It was once said that a black man would be president "when pigs fly", well just last week we saw all the headlines stating "Swine Flu". What one has to do with another is beyond me. The tone is racist.
Another joker using the screen name, 'ot', had this to add: "Americans need to stop going to Mexico and contaminating our people with their filthy virus." In this comment, one can witness racism and a sense of fear-mongering.
One Yahoo.com member mimicking President Obama whose screen name is ‘obama’ responded in this fashion: "Fellow Americans, fear not I will keep you safe. I am passing a plan to prevent this virus from spreading through our nation. Its called "Operation Death-Zone"!...I am puting up state of the art fencing with our southern boarder. This fence will have auto-sniper technology with infered virus-find technology...What do you think?" What do I think? You are a complete idiot. Also, the use of a spell checker would be nice looking at ‘puting’, ‘infered’ and ‘boarder’. Try, putting, infrared and border.
Now to address Politico.com since I tend to write of political matters. In today’s edition, they ran a story today of whether or not Florida’s Governor Crist will run for the senate. At least he broke ranks with the GOP by standing behind President Obama’s stimulus plan to help put his constituents back to work. So, I wanted to see how this story was being commented on.
Again, someone using a screen name ‘homeboy’ and not his real name stated of Gov. Crist: “Charlie Crist is gay. http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2008-02-28/news/the-talk-of-the-green-iguana/ He should come out of the closet, get rid of his beard (fake wife), and live his life honestly.” How Politico.com can leave up a comment like this when they are often cited in the mainstream media is beyond me. First of all, who cares if he is GAY or not, but for someone to comment that he is not worthy to run because he is GAY is outlandish.
The article he cites as he tries to prove his point is filled with supposition and no hard facts. I would even go as far as to say it is a smear-job to besmirch the governor. One question must be asked of those reading the various comments made: Will they believe he is GAY based upon an article cited by an anonymous commenter? That is for Politico.com to answer.
As the Internet has increased in strength over the years and in some instances has now replaced newspapers as the dominant force in information gathering, I have been monitoring the comments section to numerous articles over these past nine years. The examples pointed out above are not isolated cases, but increasing in intensity. In this complex world is this the best we are offered to discuss critical matters or even ones speaking of an actress who is losing her battle to cancer?
At least newspapers require real names, real addresses and phone numbers before they publish any comment to the numerous stories they cover. For the most part, newspapers will not print lewd, and racist comments in their editorial sections. There have been isolate cases which involve racism such as the NY Post, which ran that editorial comic of a police officer shooting a monkey. But, a broad majority of our newspapers deserve our thanks and support in foregoing the publishing of racist letters. Also, a broad majority will not publish or comments that lower the bar of any civility we have left in this country and again deserve our praise.
If this is the future of journalism and opinion making through the Internet, as an Internet writer, I am thankful I grew up in the age of newspapers. Yes, we have entered a brave new world, but there is nothing brave in foregoing civility and logic. There is nothing brave about writing such lewd comments directed at Farrah Fawcett, only cowardice and where the commenter is seen as being scurrilous. What if that were their loved one? How would they feel? As the character ‘Rhett Butler’ once stated in “Gone with the Wind”, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Author’s email address is, xmjmac@optonline.net
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