"I’ll still keep up an online presence, particularly on Twitter.... I find it calmer than Facebook."

Writes Kenneth Burns, the erstwhile Isthmus writer (who's moved to Tennessee). He's deactivating Facebook at least for the summer.

Mainly, I’m weary of the politics. Understand, I’m fascinated by electoral politics, like any journalist. I have my views, and I express them in the polling booth and not many other places. Not on Facebook. I’m not interested in politics as an all-consuming leisure activity.

In my experience, though, Facebook is one rabidly political social network, and it’s not political in inspiring ways. It’s political in reductive, repetitive ways.

But why has his Facebook experience been so rabid and uncalm compared to Twitter? He's got himself to blame:

"I'm regularly amazed that the [American Players Theater] attracts sold-out crowds of Packer-jersey-wearing theatergoers to the pleasures of, say, Molière."

Says Kenneth Burns (of the Madison tabloid "Isthmus"). I think he thinks he's displaying good liberal values there, and the elitist snobbery is unintended. Keep reading the comments. Meade is in there, japing.

The Seated Lynching Effigies of Madison, Wisconsin.

A couple days ago, we were talking about the way no one at the anti-Justice Prosser rally "seemed to be bothered by the symbolism of a large balloon representing Justice Prosser hanging in effigy with its neck tied to a lamppost." I linked to this comments thread — featuring our own Meade — over at the Isthmus.

Let's revisit that thread, where you can see that a man named Kenneth Burns is making a big deal out the fact that the Prosser dummy is in the seated position:

Ladies and gentlemen, the world's first seated hanging.

That brought in David Blaska (who is a regular blogger at the Isthmus):

Actually, not. Mary Suratt was given a chair to sit on and an umbrella held over her head before the trap was sprung and she was sent to eternity along with the male co-conspirators in Lincoln's assassination. A touching example of chivalry in a gentler age. But then, she and her co-conspirators did have a trial and were found guilty.

(Fascinating!) Burns returned:

I stand corrected! Nevertheless, seems to me a baseline requirement for a hanging in effigy is that it ought to look like a hanging, as opposed to a guy sitting and leaning against a post.

Hey! Fellow Madisonians! Is your memory so short that you don't remember the Great Spiderman Lynching Controversy of 1 month ago?

The sight of a life-size Spider-Man doll [known as Venom] hanged by its neck from a balcony of a Langdon Street home near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is prompting a stern response from school officials.

Students who live on Langdon Street said the doll that some believe represented a black man had been hanging for two or three days last week before it was taken down. But many said it never should have been put there at all.

You can see in the picture that the doll was seated.

"I see the visualization of imagery that looks powerfully, iconically of the imagery of a lynching," [said Damon Williams, vice provost for diversity]... "It's an incredibly serious and egregious thing that we do condemn at the highest levels, and we don't trivialize it"....

So does the seated position of an effigy eliminate the lynching symbolism? Apparently not! Let's get on the same page about what we can do with our giant blow-up dolls in public.

(Thanks to Chuck66 for connecting the Proszilla with the Venom.)

AND: Let's remember this lovely sign from a few months ago, originally featured in this post on February 16th:



ADDED: Here's video [NOW: a photo] of the Prosser effigy ("Proszilla") getting blown up and tied to the lamppost:


Also, based on discussion and links in the comments, I don't think Mary Suratt was sitting on the chair as the noose was tied around her neck and the trap door sprung. She seems to have been seated before she was called upon to rise and accept her grisly fate.

After I note Andrew Sullivan's obsession with Sarah Palin's womb, he responds... by quoting the nastiest stuff in the comments.

He writes:

I ... stumbled across these comments in Ann Althouse's blog, regarding my skepticism of Sarah Palin's pregnancy stories. I deserve criticism on this and have aired it on this blog ... not because my doubts have been put to rest, but because I know I'm out on a limb and I know that means you take your fair share of whacks. But look at these comments, which Althouse engages with and certainly doesn't remove. I have a thick skin but really...

Go to the link to see what he selected from the comments to quote.

This comes with the territory. Some of it is even a little funny. I'm not complaining. But it does bear noting that on a widely read conservative blog, this stuff is routine. I think that's part of the GOP's problem. I also think that Althouse's engagement in the comments section and failure to remove any of these remarks is eloquent.

"Althouse engages"... "Althouse's engagement"... hey! That reminds me of the time he gratuitously mocked me for writing a blog post letting people know I'd gotten engaged. A peek into Andrew's psyche? Tied to his obsession with Palin's womb? Think about it.

Anyway, as many of you readers have seen time and time again, I have a very high tolerance for vigorous/rough/nasty speech in the comments here. (Some of it is very pro-male homosexuality!)

I rarely delete, and there is no way that my failure to delete indicates approval. I do sometimes participate in the comments, and I have one comment (accidentally double posted) near the beginning of the thread in question. That comment of mine is a response to a commenter (Loafing Oaf) who asks:

How come we often see Althouse commenting on Andrew Sullivan posts but we almost never see him posting replies? I like Andrew Sullivan, but I wish he'd engage in more back-and-forth between him and bloggers who disagree with him.

(Guess that one got answered.)

Althouse tends to post replies when bloggers post criticism of her. In recent years, a lot of the bigshot political bloggers have decided to just ignore debating people who disagree with them.

So I did engage with a commenter in that thread. I answered a specific question that was addressed to me, and that I happened to find interesting. What I don't do — and what Sullivan is wrong to infer — is monitor the hundreds of comments that come in every day. I don't systematically keep track of anything. Sometimes I read haphazardly, and I am a very busy person... a very busy person who is committed to free speech and to creating a place where people with different opinions can talk with/at each other.

Now, Sullivan is upset/annoyed that some homophobic things show up in the threads here, as if it says something about my blog. He doesn't have comments, but I'll bet if he did, he'd collect plenty of homophobic crap at his place too. Probably even more than shows up here. Maybe that's one reason he doesn't have comments. But I've chosen to open my place to comments, and I have a strong free speech policy.

And let me add that my writing on this blog has never included anything homophobic, that I have a long record of supporting gay rights, and that many of the commenters who hang out here here are gay men. There is no way that I am cuing readers to be homophobic, and I think people who care about free speech and vigorous debate should be careful not to impute such things to me.

ADDED: And check out the lame piling-on by the local blogger for the Isthmus, Kenneth Burns:

... Andrew Sullivan...  quotes vile anti-gay comments on the blog of Ann Althouse, the Robert W. & Irma M. Arthur-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Althouse is teaching on the Madison campus this fall.

Indeed, Althouse has been teaching on the Madison campus since 1984.

These slurs appear quite literally under Althouse's name. If her policy is not to delete comments, that's her prerogative. But what purpose is served by leaving them up, other than to humilate gays like Sullivan and me and further curdle an already dismal political discourse? Is this prominent Madisonian proud to have these people as readers?

The purpose is free speech and vigorous debate.

AND: No one emailed me to point out offensive comments and request that I consider deleting them. I wasn't aware of any of them until I read Sullivan's post this morning. I did get email the other day asking me to delete some nonsense about Glenn Beck. (I didn't delete.) I might delete some truly vile things about gay people. I've deleted comments that contain the n-word. Try emailing me!

ALSO: Boy, a link from Sullivan — who has huge traffic — brings very few readers over here. I would like them to see what the real context is. Of course, a link from the Isthmus blog brings absolutely nothing. As expected.