In my city, racist, mean and truly stupid people are alive and well and they live in the comments section on stories posted by the London Free Press.
All it takes is a computer to sign up to add comments to the end of a story. Just about every paper does it although some of them moderate the comments before they go live on the Internet. But that requires someone to have the time to sift through every comment that comes in and that’s a luxury that slimmed-down media companies often can’t afford anymore.
A regular reader of the paper gets to know the names of those whose twisted sense of the world gets drawn out by what they read in the news.
One guy makes a joke about any story involving the assault of a woman. He apparently thinks it’s amusing to remark something like “she had it coming” regarding a female murder victim followed by “lol” or “haha”. Another regular writer believes white people are under attack by the rest of society and the government and takes any opportunity to assume that a white person will be treated unfairly or their death will not be properly investigated. They appear to be dead serious and the best part is, the person’s surname is White.
Another particularly ignorant rant yesterday criticized “foreign” truckers as being unsafe, unlicensed and dangerous. It was amusing that this particular posting followed the details of a tractor-trailer collision that closed part of the 401 at Dorchester yesterday morning. The “white” guy from London had caused the crash and was charged by police while the driver with the “foreign” name was innocently caught up in the mishap.
Now you know what weird Aunt Mabel does on all of those days between family holidays when you don’t see her. Until the next time she spews hideously embarrassing rants at the dinner table while being passed the carrots, she’s sitting at her computer, righting the wrongs of the world (in her mind) by pecking out rambling, hate-filled essays. The comments section on www.lfpress.com has become a bulletin board for distasteful ideas and the musings of sad, frightened people. If this forum is enough of a release to keep these people from ever acting out on their hatred and fear, I hope it never gets closed down.
Don’t let it bother you sis! These are the cowards of our society who now have a voice. These are the people you see on the street who can’t look you in the eye. These are the ones that mutter after you have safely walked by them and there is no chance of you hearing. These are the weak, the scared, the pitiful. the powerless, the socially impotent little weaklings who can only express their weak little thoughts when they know they can’t be held accountable in any way. Take the Mr. T route when dealing with them; pity the fools!