Defusing the Bombs
By and large I’ve been most impressed with the level of discourse to be found in the comments to MTOW. There are differences of opinion, some of them sharp, which invariably produce some discord. Even so, the consideration, respect and overall civility toward me and other readers is something I’ve been pleased to see. And as I’ve written before, harmony is great in music but can be really, really boring in opinions about the state and direction of an athletics program. And if everyone in the world thought I was 100 percent right on everything I thought or wrote, my bride would not be able to live with me. She has a hard enough time as is.
Of course not every comment makes the cut. As I’ve mentioned before I won’t abide by name calling, personal attacks or rumors/innuendo that unfairly bring a person’s character into question.
And occasionally I’ll get a bomb thrower throwing a bomb my way and I just defuse it by throwing it in the delete pile with all the other duds. One I got a couple of weeks ago called for physical violence against Ron Wellman and Jeff Bzdelik in disturbingly graphic detail. A couple of days later I ran across this piece by Jeff Pearlman of SI.Com Pearlman Tracks Down Critic that dealt with the issue of what can happen in this internet age when actions so often have little or no consequences.
Whenever I’ve been taken to task by a reader, I always follow the same procedure. I thank them for the comment, I try as best I can to explain why I wrote what I did the way I did and I endeavor to avoid, at all costs, any defensive or contentious tone. And my experiences usually mirror that of Pearlman. The detractor will write me back, thank me for the response and say he probably went a little overboard in his original missive.
It’s a Brave New World we’re living in, even old dogs like me.