The anonymous cruelty of the Web (LEFTY COLUMNISTS FEELING THE HEAT)

Sorry, I just can't do it -- I thought I would enter into the prevailing spirit of online commentary, its slash-and-burn casual meanness.

But the truth is, I am in no position to comment upon your degree of suckiness. I don't know you, don't know whether you are a good or bad person, and should you, oh, stick a fork in the toaster, trying to extract an obstinate half of English muffin, and be electrocuted and die, I would hesitate to use that incident to say whether this is a stupid end to a stupid life, or a tragic mistake made by an otherwise splendid person.

This degree of introspection must be why I pull down the big bucks as a newspaper columnist, because it utterly eludes so many. You cannot read a story online, no matter how unadorned a tragedy, without it being followed by hoots of derision. A 9-year-old boy struck and killed by a bus at Disney World. "Do they charge X-tra for this ride??" someone quips on FloridaToday. A Swedish hiker falls to his death from the rim of a volcano on Bali. "I have NO SYMPATHY for this MORON," another opines on Yahoo News.

Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote a column in the Miami Herald last week calling for an end to the practice of running anonymous comments after articles online.

"Message boards . . . ," he wrote, "have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety."

Ain't it the truth? Yet, as I read Pitts' piece, I was curious if he would implement the policy he had just advocated -- nope, immediately after condemning the practice, he then runs anonymous comments, which seems odd; if he believes it enough to espouse it, he should have his tech guys pull the plug. It isn't as if he needs to catch the czar's ear on this one.

Readers fond of spouting bile see it as their First Amendment right, and cry censorship when decent people squeegee their repulsive sentiments into the sewer.

It is not censorship -- censorship is done by governments. This is called "editing," and if the column above gets it, why shouldn't the remarks below? If I smirked at a 9-year-old boy hit by a bus, it would never make the paper.

Most media Web sites offer readers the opportunity to respond. Why do they give a platform to anonymous cruelty? The true reason has nothing to do with free expression -- rather, Web sites are evaluated according to how many people click on them and how long they stay, and if a certain percentage log in to glory over the death of a woman and a baby hit by a train, their participation still helps to pay the bills.

Myself, I struggle not to read the comments posted after my column, because they tend to be long partisan harangues or short personal attacks. But curiosity often overcomes my restraint, and I am invariably rewarded with a nasty slap or two, which, to be honest, sometimes stings.

I've considered asking the paper to take the comments down. But first, as I said, they serve a commercial purpose. Second, people should have a chance to react -- I wouldn't stop the mail from being delivered because vile messages also arrive by that route. Better to cope with the world than to try and wallpaper it.

Third, I once had a colleague who -- supposedly -- demanded that his online comment section be closed, and, at the time, that struck me as in keeping with his general loathsomeness and cowardice.

Can't be like that. It is a Zen discipline, gazing dispassionately at a Greek chorus of damnation.

There are questions I would ask those howling in displeasure -- why read something you don't like? Day in and day out, eyes bulging in horror, then leaping to condemn? Isn't that sort of a Westboro Baptist Church approach to life? Traipsing after those you hate, spewing venom through foam-flecked lips?

Who lives like that? My guess is they are -- to borrow a phrase I coined for the aforementioned former colleague -- their own worst punishment. Nothing I might add could increase their misery.

Mere calumny falls flat -- a guy flipping you the bird in traffic annoys you, but three minutes later you've forgotten him. Softly stated criticism, if valid, carries far more weight than any insult.

My column Friday on TimeOut's April Fool's issue immediately drew a comment saying, in essence: "How is it that this moron is allowed to have a job at a newspaper?"

I ask myself that every day, though not in those words. It is a wonder to me. Think about it: This column runs four days a week. There is seldom any actual news in it, no Hollywood gossip, no sports scores, no inside dirt. Just stuff that I find interesting, presented in a manner I hope is pleasant to read. Though I write exclusively for those who like it, those who don't, well, as a full-service columnist, I welcome you, too, and encourage you to patronize our advertisers.

Is your ox gored today? If you are reading the actual paper, you may crumple it into a ball and fling it away. If you are reading online, there is a section provided immediately below for you to have at me, and each other, to your anthracite hearts' content, providing an electronic Punch and Judy show for those who like that kind of thing.

"Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote a column in the Miami Herald last week calling for an end to the practice of running anonymous comments after articles online. "Message boards . . . ," he wrote, "have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety."

And how are Pitts' columns any different?

[Article] Third, I once had a colleague who -- supposedly -- demanded that his online comment section be closed, and, at the time, that struck me as in keeping with his general loathsomeness and cowardice.

Any idea who he's talking about?

When you consider the source, this is actually pretty funny.

I think I see your point, although I still don't think it's a knee-slapper.

If Americans' blood has grown so thin that we are supposed to recoil in horror from a boozy newspaperman (what, pleonasm? Oh, sorry!), or from guys who get mad at their wives and rip phones out of walls, or pop her one (Humphrey Bogart's first wife used to hit back -- he thought she was a great dame), then this guy is living in a hell of his own chickenhearted liberaldom's devising.

And how are Pitts' columns any different?

Good point. IMHO if Pitts had the courage of his convictions and acted in accordance with his thinking to realize his heart's desire, he'd be over in South Africa leading a band of rural assassins, murdering isolated white farmers for their race, one by one.

He'd eventually die of a buttload of buckshot, but at least he'd have led a life attuned to his thoughts.

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