Earlier today, David Anderson of In Search of Utopia cross-posted “Pick your cotton?” here at Random Fate. In this post, David asks that a particular post by Paul of Wizbang be condemned as hate speech “disguised as some sort of sick satire.” A firestorm of comments and trackbacks have arisen at the original post at In Search of Utopia.

Before I discuss any further, some background is needed. David is one of the many who did me the favor of guest-posting when I was on hiatus. I am also privileged to post at In Search of Utopia, where I did guest-post for David during one of his absences. I have not posted to his blog in a while because of time constraints on my part. I asked David to guest-post for me because I have always enjoyed his writing, and also, more importantly, because even though David has a particular, strongly left-leaning point of view, he does not dismiss opposing viewpoints out of hand as is often the case of people who could be described as “opinionated”.

For some additional context it should be noted I took Wizbang off my blogroll long ago (over a year, I believe) because I felt that much of what I read there in both the posts and comments was fueled by unreasoning hatred. There have been several instances where bloggers have taken exception to posts at Wizbang, and not all those who disagreed were from the dreaded left-wing that the authors at Wizbang appear to despise. In essence, Wizbang represented the inverse of the attitude that prompted me to ask David to guest-post at Random Fate.

A final note before I continue, although I feel I have something to add to any discussion on race issues, given where I grew up, the people with whom I have worked, and now living on another continent in a different society, I do not write on the topic. My reticence is due to many factors, not the least of which are the high levels of raw emotion associated with any discussion of race.

I read the post at Wizbang that prompted David’s anger, and what perspective I can provide is this: Satire is generally very difficult to pull off, and this post does not even approach what I would consider poor satire, much less that of well-written satire that prompts both a chuckle as well as deep thought.

Does the text of the post indicate that the author is a racist? I cannot answer that question, because the author and his attitudes were one of the primary reasons I chose to stop reading Wizbang. Since I no longer regularly read the site, I do not have the context for this single post nor the larger texture of the views of this author.

I do believe that David Anderson is not doing his case any favors by reacting with such anger. While the anger is understandable, especially given David’s long history of posting on race related issues and his own personal experiences of being subject to racism, his anger is resulting in lowering the level of David’s post to that of the hateful commenters always present at any pissing-match that the authors of Wizbang seem to be so eager to participate in.

I have made similar errors, posting in anger instead of letting the rage subside so that my point could be made in a way that people would read and think about rather than immediately cheer or deride. I have tried to learn from my errors, so in the past couple of months I have deleted posts before they were ever published, instead waiting to write something driven by reason rather than emotion.

Blogworld has enough writing aimed at generating knee-jerk responses. I don’t want to add to the cacophony.

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