January 11, 2009
Sunday

Two incidents have garnered my corner of central Pennsylvania some notoriety in recent months. Back in September, a soccer mom lost her permit to carry a gun because other parents at her child’s games were disturbed by the sight of the holstered weapon strapped to the woman’s hip. She sued for restoration of the permit and won, and asked for damages because the incident caused her to lose clients in her childcare business and held her up to ridicule in the community.

Last week a video of a fight at a local Chuck E. Cheese surfaced on YouTube. The altercation was among a group of young women, one of them pregnant, who were visiting the restaurant with their children. It was one in a string of disturbances that led to the management’s decision to employ a security guard, at least on weekends.

The Patriot-News, the newspaper of record of the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, reported both of these matters factually and professionally. They published several letters to the editor, and in the case of the gun-toting mother, seemed to strike a balance between letters that defended the woman’s actions and those that called her judgment into question. (Nobody, as far as I know, actually supports public fighting among mothers of preschoolers at kiddie-themed restaurants.)

Besides letters to the editor, which must be signed and have their authorship verified by telephone, The Patriot-News allows readers to comment on matters of community interest through online discussion boards. These forums require no verified identification at all. Participants call themselves by screen names or strings of letters and numbers that have no apparent meaning. You can probably guess the level of discourse that results when people can discuss controversial matters in complete anonymity.

In today’s paper, columnist Nancy Eshelman confesses that she is appalled, yes folks, appalled at the ugliness of the tone that discussions of the pistol packin’ mama, the combative pizza eaters, and Harrisburg’s mayor’s recent directive that city firefighters learn some Spanish have taken on these anonymous boards. The comments indicate widespread racial intolerance, distrust of individuals who are not natural-born United States citizens, and ridicule of people who live in rural areas and have not completed a college degree. Eshelman believes that the intolerance is rampant in these comments “because the Web allows people to share hate without sharing [their] names. They spew their venom, then slither away, the source of their poison hiding behind [meaningless screen names].”

Really, Nancy, it’s “the Web” that allows this?  It is true that anyone with an Internet connection can have an online presence. And they don’t even need their own computer and paid-for ISP account. Internet service is available free at libraries. People can join bulletin boards and have personal blogs at free sites such as Blogger without revealing their true identities, allowing them to say anything they please about any topic. But it’s not “the Web” that provides opportunities for people to spew so much hatefulness anonymously. The Internet is only a mechanism. It’s the entities that sponsor such forums and bulletin boards and make them available without requiring participants to stand behind what they say that enable the spread of such vitriol. In this regard, The Patriot-News is complicit in promoting and disseminating hate.

Last year I described Nancy Eshelman as “a sour-tongued, acerbic writer whose social criticism often comes across as whining.” (This was in a piece in which I indicated the remarkable happenstance of my actually agreeing with something she said, and it was even something positive about Ed Rendell!) As writers, Eshelman and I have little in common. One characteristic we do share is our commitment to writing under our own names and providing contact information for those who wish to discuss our ideas further. This afternoon, I sent a letter to the newspaper, summarizing much of what I’ve said here, and ending with:

If Ms. Eshelman is truly appalled, than she should prevail upon her employer to require participants to identify themselves, not only in letters like this one, but in the online forums and the sports fan line as well.

I sent a copy directly to Eshelman. We’ll see if I get any response.

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