Comments Make The Blog Go Round

Speaker's Corner
ElectricAvenueVille

Moon of Alabama is a damn fine a replacement for the old Whiskey Bar.

But it can never be the real thing.

Why?

Because, one of the things I found most interesting was that, in addition to his wicked posts, Billmon always patrolled, and participated in, the comment threads at the old place.

I understand why he had to shut down the comments (ie. with 500 or more comments per post he was going crazy, now matter how good the conversation) but I really miss the multilayered stratification of the dialogue that went on there - and the kicker is, just like subway stations, when there is a real person watching over you rather than a machine or a video surveillance camera, the discourse and the human interactions are somehow more civilized.

Rowdy maybe, but still civilized, even when they wandered into the darkness on the edge of town*.

Anyway, in the spirit of civilized discourse I'd like to bring the following comment to everyone's attention. This is from new reader ' surf's up' who responded to our earlier post about CanWest wanting an editorial writer for the Ottawa Citizen who believes in the ideology of 'small government and personal freedom':

"Code words for: government outsourced to cronies in the private sector at two or three times the cost or more, rampant corporatism, and total information awareness."

Good stuff that. And an important issue to explore. Maybe we should start by collating all the specific examples where privatization has failed miserably.


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*My favorite comment on the Billmon thread in question was from SusanG., who later went on to great blogging fame and fortune herself when she helped get Joseph Wilson's story out and did a lot to expose Gannon/GuckertGate over at dKOS. She had this to say about the great value in the inspiration of art: "That's what great art has always done. It's like heroin mainlined straight to the brain, unexpected truth in all its glory."

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