Why?

I was reading a news story about Barack Obama defeating Hillary Clinton in another primary today, and veteran readers of my blog will probably correctly surmise that this pleased me. As it did.

One of my worst habits as a person, other than public intoxication and licking myself in inappropriate ways, is clicking on the Read Comments section at the end of AOL news stories. Why do I do that? Why? Is it malignant self-hate? Why can I not break that perfectly wretched habit?

It's not that I disagree with the political or cultural views of the people who post the comments, though I often do. America is a democracy and people are free to believe what they like, and I'm okay with that. I'll even extend that courtesy to Dinesh D'Souza, though I'm not always convinced that he would reciprocate. And in any event, the odds are they wouldn't agree with me if I posted comments, so it balances out nicely.

But what really scares me is the almost unbelievable display of pure blockheaded stupidity most of the comments demonstrate when it comes to simple things like writing complete sentences, punctuating in a half-assedly right way, and employing dictionaries when it comes to spelling simple words like "country". Sometimes I can't even make out what the commentator is trying to say because his comment is so poorly written it might as well have been produced by a player piano. I'd copy-and-paste some notorious examples, but it's probably illegal and certainly unsporting to reproduce some private citizen's writing without permission.

But seriously, folks, there's the news story right above the comment box, so there's really no excuse for "McCaine", is there? You just read the story, didn't you?? And how seriously should I weigh the opinion of someone who believes (as demonstrated in more than one instance) that there is an "s" in "country"? Or, the one that really makes my jaw ache, the profligate apostrophizer who turns an ordinary expression into a gruelling death-match like "it's the word's of god". Every time I see this I hear sheets of plate glass breaking in my head.

I'm not talking about so-called "spelling flames" or wars between specialists over whether it's appropriate to split an infinitive (I hew to the Star Trek model, myself), or whether one needs permission from one's elders before creating an ad hoc gerund. I'm talking about the ability to write even the most basic of sentences, and I worry that not being to write the most basic of sentences means that the commentator can't even support the most basic of thoughts.

Maybe I'm just being an elitist.

But here's an interesting finding. The comments associated with AOL sports stories are very often better written in a technical sense, less inclined to hysterical hyperbole, and more inclined to admit that one's opposite number may have a point, than the comments on AOL's political and general news stories. What does that mean? I think it means "Al Michaels for President", by cracky (though honestly I don't know if Al Michaels is still working or, for that matter, still alive).

(Just to close this out, the worst comments by far are found following entertainment stories, especially ones featuring the latest celebrity who is circling the drain and about to take the plunge. Reading more than one or two of them in a row makes me feel like there's someone punching holes in the sheet metal of my soul with a rotary hammer.)