Public Hanging

Dang, there are a lot of good blogs out there. Seriously, some excellent ones. My short-lived, but favorite was Ayelet Waldman's blog, Bad Mother. Waldman, the wife of writer Michael Chabon, is also a published author, a lawyer, a professor at UC Berkely, and a mother of four children. Yes, she is an over achiever! Her blog was hilarious and biting and truthful about mothering, politics, mental illness, and obsessingly loving her husband. She once asked, "Is it possible to stalk someone you live with?"

She left her blog because she started a biweekly series on Salon, which she believed would be covering the same stuff as her blog. So far she has written two pieces. One, predictably about blogging, and confessing your suicidal urges on line, and the ramifications on her children. The other was about hoping her son was gay. Her previous articles at salon, about helping voter turn out for Kerry, and a personal account of late term abortion, already displayed her tendancy to jump in the fire. With the publication of her last two articles you'd think that she had committed the most horrific crimes known to humanity. The outpouring of hate and disgust slung at her is nothing short of staggering. I just visited her blog, which still has the last remaining entry on it. I noticed that the comments section had grown, so I wondered if people had commented since her articles had appeared. Reading the uncensored and hateful comments that people so easily left (anonymously, I might add) I wondered why they cried for her to draw the line when they themselves didn't. As if telling her to never write a single thing again wasn't bad enough, one commenter told her to stick her head in an oven and do us all a favor by offing herself. Another called her evil.

I don't understand the urge to publically humiliate and degrade someone for their work. I could never tell anyone to kill themself--that's about as cruel and irresponsible as it gets. Here's a better solution: Don't read her.