I first read about the Little Green Footballs controversy over on MSNBC's Blogspotting blog. LGF, for those of you who don't know, is a blog that focuses on Mideast politics and the worst excesses of Muslim fanaticism. It's a great source of news you won't find elsewhere. It also features some opinions (in the comments section especially) that veer off into right-wing hysteria. Evidently Femia at MSNBC listed LGF in it's "featured blog" list; some folks complained that LGF was a "hate site"; Femia tagged old-school blogger Anil Dash as the leader of the anti-LGF opposition (Dash has made plenty of comments on LGF arguing with its regulars, but says he never emailed MSNBC to ask for its removal.)
We've dealt with flamewars here on Ishbadiddle. It's a shame when political debate devolves into petty name-calling. In an effort to call for civility, I wrote the following at LGF:
I'm going to do something dangerous here -- wander into the middle of a flamewar. I don't read LGF religously, and I've only rarely read Anil's blog. So I'm not going to get into the who's-right-and-who's-wrong-and-who's-a-bigger-crybaby thing. I come neither to praise Anil nor to bury him.I didn't get much of a respone from the LGFers -- one person wrote a comment that had something to do with Salman Rushdie -- but I did get an email from Dash thanking me for my comments. Dash did the right thing -- he offered to continue the debate in person.Look, I'm a liberal New Yorker. I have a blog. I link to LGF and I read it. It's a great blog -- it's got news I won't find anywhere else. It's important for me to read and try and understand what the hell is going on in the world.
But sometimes, well, I just can't read it. I'll be honest -- sometimes it's because the news is too hard to read. It makes me too angry, or sad. And yes, sometimes it's because the news and opinions challenge my liberal beliefs. [Still on the honesty tip -- I was hoping the sniper didn't turn out to be a Muslim (just as, from some folks' comments here, it seems that some of you were hoping that he was), not only because it (likely) means that more foreign-sponsored terrorism is on the way, but also because it once again forces me to do that "but-not-all-Muslims-are-evil" thing that we liberals have to do.]
But more often, I stop reading LGF because of the tone. I've had flamewars on my own site, and when things got personal, the people who didn't agree with me (and my fellow posters) just left. They didn't come back. And that's what I fear is going on with LGF -- people who don't agree with your opinions get turned off by the tone and the breakdown of civility, and they don't come back.
The thing is, these are the very people who should be reading your blog. People like me. When I read posts like the one about the mosque that received threatening leaflets, and Charles' comment that "this monstrous leafleteer must be brought to justice before he leaflets again," well, I'm just like, WTF? Sure, one threatening leaflet pales in comparison to the daily acts of anti-Semitism the world over. But I'm sure if the same leaflet (well, with different wording, as we Jews don't eat *that* much curry) were delivered to a synagogue, the reaction would be quite different.
I'm getting off on a tangent here. (Hey, isn't that what blogging is all about?) My point is, there's so much news out there about the evils of Islamic fanaticism, and you research and present it so well, that it speaks for itself. But the commentary and flaming turn people away. The frame gets bigger than the picture.
Look, I'm not saying LGF or its commentors should be censored (they'd have to pry my ACLU card from my cold dead fingers first), and I'm glad you got up on the MSNBC list because LGF shows what good blogging is all about -- a point of view, intelligently expressed -- and because people should read what's going on. I'd just like to point out why I don't read LGF as often as I should.
I don't know. Maybe the time for civility vanished last September. I hope not. I hope we can still sit down over a cup of coffee and hash out what needs to be done next.
Flamewars are as old as the Internet itself. Any medium where folks can write quickly and anonymously on hot-button topics will get personal. (Someone might even compare someone to a Nazi.) But if blogging is going to be a better medium than Usenet, we have to act and write with civility.
| LGF | Anil Dash | Civility |
Yeh, that’s why I never really started going there. Once or twice I went to visit because you had linked it and because Charles made some worthwhile comments on Webdesign-L and because Zeldman peeped the design once. But the signal-to-noise ratio just made me run screaming in the opposite direction. It’s like one of those allegedly intelligent politicial roundtable television shows where there’s a whole lot of hollering but not much sense.
So chalk me up for a “Me, too” and then some.
Yeh, that’s why I never really started going there. Once or twice I went to visit because you had linked it and because Charles made some worthwhile comments on Webdesign-L and because Zeldman peeped the design once. But the signal-to-noise ratio just made me run screaming in the opposite direction. It’s like one of those allegedly intelligent politicial roundtable television shows where there’s a whole lot of hollering but not much sense.
So chalk me up for a “Me, too” and then some.
