Do we pity the man who is, against his will, forced into fatherhood?

Earlier this month, many of my readers objected to my lack of sympathy for men who, unlike women who have the right to get an abortion, find themselves dragged into fatherhood by the women they've impregnated when those women exercise their right to choose and go ahead and have those babies. I doubled down on my opinion here, on July 7th, and the comments thread there was a huge freakout, much of which you can't see now, because we did a ton of deletions. It was so bad that we ultimately had to turn off comments to stop the gush of repetitive abuse.

I hope you remember enough of that discussion to apply it to the specific context of a case in today's news:

Simon Cowell has been pictured for the first time following news that his married lover Lauren Silverman is expecting his baby.

The 53-year-old music mogul...  is said to be 'freaked out' by the news he is to become a father for the first time... Cowell... has been named as a co-respondent in the divorce papers Lauren's estranged husband Andrew filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court two weeks ago, citing adultery as the reason for ending the marriage.... Cowell is likely to be called to the witness stand to reveal not only details of the alleged affair with Lauren but also details of his personal finances, estimated to be in the region of $350million....

While Cowell is said to accept that the baby, due next February, is his, the news of 36-year-old Lauren's pregnancy came as a huge shock to both Simon and his closest female friends including Sinitta and ex fiancée Mezhgan Hussainy - otherwise known as his 'harem.'...

So here's a man who has used his great wealth and fame to acquire what is openly called a harem. All of these women were in a position to use their powers of reproduction against him, either deliberately, accidentally on purpose, or through pure oopsiness. They were playing and playing and playing with Nature's great life force, and Nature dropped a consequence.

‘In the harem hierarchy, Lauren is regarded as the fun, party girl. The other girls have all met her, they know who she is and they have been reduced to tears by this.'

It's fun until it's not. And why are the other "girls" crying? Because they didn't make the big move and bind him and/or his money to them with a baby? Because he was handing out enough cash and good times that they all understood the arrangement, and Lauren broke the rules? How many abortions and attendant payoffs have there been in the harem over the years?

It is as yet unclear whether or not Cowell and Lauren will attempt to make their relationship work for the sake of their unborn child.

There's a reality show for you. Divorce cranking away. The harem in tears. Cranky old bastard who said he couldn't tolerate a kid.

ADDED: The above-linked article has a claim that Cowell and Lauren were trying for pregnancy, but here's an article quoting someone "close to Cowell" saying: "The pregnancy has taken him by surprise. He assumed she was using birth control... Simon thought this was a casual relationship — friends with benefits. The pregnancy was not planned. He is feeling tricked." If that's true, it makes Cowell's case exactly what we were talking about last month.

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"As a frequent (daily) reader of your blog, I have observed that your postings have taken a darker tone since you closed the comments section."

"As to causes and effects, I have no idea whether you closed the comments because of some other area of your life or the disappointment of closing of the comments (and the reasons therefor) caused the apparent darkness. Whatever the case may be, I hope that you are well."

Emails a reader, interestingly. I'm not seeing any life changes, aside from the anosmia for which I had an MRI of my head, which has the side effect of causing me to feel unusually assured that there's nothing wrong with my brain. I feel fine, and Meade and I are very happy as we approach our 4th anniversary on Saturday. But your question got me thinking — as I was out biking today — and I worked out a 3-part answer. Each of the 3 parts has 2 subparts. Any combination of the subparts may be causing what you see as darkness.

1. It just looks different.

a. The absence of comments has pushed me to go a little further in revealing my thoughts, since I'm not throwing it over to the commenters. When I do this, you are less able to think what you want to think about me, which might be that I'm only saying bland, nice things, but I never was.

b. The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.

2. It's a shift in the news out there, and I'm blogging about different things.

a. Last month we were talking about Supreme Court cases, and this month it's been the racial and sexual matters in the Zimmerman trial and the long shadow of the World Wide Weiner.

b. Before the gay marriage case was decided, I engaged in a lot of conciliatory interplay with people who were saying some pretty harsh things, which I did not respond to in kind, but after the case was decided, we needed to move on.

3. The loss of comments really did affect my mood.

a. I saw some hurtful hostility before I gave up. You can't see all the things that Meade and I deleted, so you don't know what happened, and the moderation function was broken at the time. After I shut off the comments, I had to deal with email and writing on other sites, and I saw some people whom I had valued as guests griping about what I did to them, showing little appreciation for what I had given for 9 years.

b. I really do miss the comments — or, that is, my idea of what the comments were. 

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"Is there a section at the bottom for comments?"

A New Yorker cartoon, pointed out by a reader, who's observed the end of commenting on this blog.

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The return of a reader who had stayed away because it "became apparent that your blog had been held hostage by repetitive, inane, banal and ad hominem comments."

Here's some interesting email:

I have been a very long time reader and admirer. I just learned yesterday via Instapundit that you closed comments.

Congratulations!

Years ago I felt that your intelligent and witty blog commentariat added to the Althouse Blog. Recently I came to realize that the comment community was distracting from and spoiling your blog. I became a non reader. It wasn't easy to break my Althouse habit but it became apparent that your blog had been held hostage by repetitive, inane, banal and ad hominem comments. Forgive me.... but a "circle jerk." Yes, I know I didn't have to click on comments but it was so easy to do.....! A mistake every time. I now feel free from that time wasting temptation. Thank you.

I am thrilled you have elected to go 'commando'... comment free.

I am putting Althouse back near the top of my Favorites. I want to thank you for years of intelligent, interesting and provocative posts.

I can only hope that Instapundit isn't destroyed in the same fashion.

First, I don't think Instapundit will have the same experience. He has different software and PJ Media staff to do the work that I (and Meade) did by hand. And I think my style of blogging (and engaging with commenters) fomented a wild atmosphere that attracted and enabled some crazies and haters (along with some great and creative commenters). One commenter over at Instapundit — telling him not to link to me — complained that my opinions were "based on feelings and personal perceptions." I'm happy to own that. I want to bring that to my writing, and at the same time, I realize it's part of what made the comments evolve the way they did over the 9 years that the blog was also an open house party.

Second, I know some of those who were shut out feel angry and aggrieved, and I can see (for they write about me elsewhere) that some of them are eager to see the "traffic" to this blog plummet. But I did think I was losing readers who were letting my commenters affect how they saw me.  And this email reinforces that belief. I accept losing readers who were coming here for the comments, but it's interesting to think of gaining readers who may have shunned this place because of the commenters who made it feel toxic. I'd long had the problem of commenters making my site look "right-wing." I'm a political moderate. I didn't mind comments that contrasted with what I said. But in the last months of comments, the toxicity came from commenters who meant to poison this blog to death.

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"I have been giving your new no-comments policy a lot of thought since it was implemented."

Emails a long-time reader:

Like most people, I don't respond well to change, and when I found that my favorite online haunt was no longer the nouveau salon that I had come to love, I was taken aback.

The problem for me, first, is that so many of your posts literally invite comments. You write, presenting an event or a situation, and then you comment, and then you question.  You write to provoke thought, and I love that about your blog. But now that comments are turned off, I am much less inclined to take the time to think, because there is no place for me to respond. I still read every post, but I don't think about them as much.

Second, I miss the opportunity to say thank you for posts like one today with Meade giving advice about the mower. I know, I can send an email, but I think it's nice to be appreciative (and appreciated) publicly, and email is private.

My experience of Althouse blog is sadly diminished.

I still read every post, but I don't think about them as much. Here's something to think about, even though you won't think as much. Why don't you think as much? In the old days, when you read books — imagine the greatest books you ever read — did you say to yourself This is all very thought provoking, but unless I can immediately jot down the thoughts it provokes in me, in a place where the author and other readers can see it, I'm really not inclined to pursue those thoughts?

There is a place for your thoughts. It's really the only place for your thoughts: Your head. Do you think What's the point of that, thoughts just in my head, not immediately strewn under the writings of the author who made me think of something just now?

Human connection is valuable, but why must it come — why is it considered better — in the form of immediate expression in response to whatever provoked a thought? I understand the love of spontaneous interaction (and I maintained the "nouveau salon" for 9 years). But there are other time-lines to relationships. There is slowness and gestation. There is the thought as it exists in the purely intimate space of your own head. There is turning to your own writing, in your own place (not the author's). And there is finding another human being to talk to... perhaps about a blog post you read somewhere this morning.

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Some people don't quite get the polls I put up around here.

Here's recent, typical criticism, aimed at the poll called "Althouse without comments." The aggrieved emailer writes:

I wanted to point out that you chose the options for the attitudes we might have towards your new policy. Exactly two of those choices implied that the new policy was detrimental, and both of those choices were framed in terms of emotionally negative or dismissive attitudes. You did not, for example, provide a choice like "I loved reading and writing comments, I will miss them, and I don't see how the blog can be the same without them." You gave us "I am aggrieved and grudging" and "the blog is nothing to me." You then pointed out that the only people who objected to the change were negative soreheads, and good riddance. OK, have it your way.

The sentence that begins "You then pointed out" is (badly) paraphrasing what I wrote here.

I wrote back:

The polls are a form of expression for me. No one has to take them, and I make no claim that they are anything but a kind of poem that I've written that you're allowed to play with.

Do you see how Althouse thinks of her polls?
	Yes, like everything at Althouse, they're dishonest and all about her.
	Yes, the individual lines, like this one, are as lines in a poem.
	Yes, she thinks she's an artist and has no insight into whether her work is crap.
	No, because there's really no "thinking" to speak of.
	No, because I'm preoccupied with what I think and Althouse won't talk about that.
	No, because if the lines don't rhyme, I haven't got time.
pollcode.com free polls

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Instapundit opens up comments in a "grand experiment."

He writes:

I’ve opened ‘em up before — and, for that matter, Ann Althouse did it once when I was away, to much excitement — but this new system should be much better. 

The system is part of "the new rollout of tech at PJ Media will allow one sign-in to work across the whole site," so you've got to join their system to be able to comment. And they will be able to manage you in ways that I was not able to manage my commenters (some of whom really were trying to destroy my blog and waste all our time).

Someone at Instapundit named Stoutcat says:

Where Althouse closes a door, Reynolds opens a window! This is an excellent idea, and I'm anticipating much enjoyment and eddification from reading your commenters, who are, no doubt, as far above Althouse's commenters, as hers were above the general horde.

Instapundit responds:

Yeah, Althouse's apparent joy at being comment-free gives me pause. But there' s no connection -- this has been in the works for months as part of PJ's single sign-on thing.

As for "Althouse's apparent joy at being comment-free," if that's what he's seeing, that is in fact only appearance. The loss has been very painful, because I believed the comments gave the place a lot of energy. But some unknown proportion of the commenters were people with ill will, who wanted destruction, and deleting even the ones we knew about had become literally a full-time job. But I wasn't in some big old system with lots of tech people. I've kept independent, with the simplicity of the people's platform, Blogger, which won't let me exclude people. I could only delete, which was a technique that my most aggressive antagonists used against me (and against all the other commenters who'd contributed so much over the years).

That really hurt, but I'm an optimist, and — like a blog — I live in the present and move forward, so I find the good in whatever the situation is, continually making choices about how to keep things as good as possible, and the day came when the balance of good and bad in the comments experience tipped so severely that I couldn't maintain the sunny denial needed to put up with everything. Since then, I've felt the loss, and part of the loss is seeing exiled commenters talking about me elsewhere on the web, forgetting/ignoring the problem that made me close the comments — as if I would shut off the comments because people attacked my writings! — and saying such nasty things about me that I could get depressed brooding about the real proportion of good faith to bad faith commenters.

But I've got to resist traipsing down that detour as I continue on the road of blogging, where I've found so much joy in the past and hope to find more, doing things in this newly simplified style. Meanwhile, Instapundit gets fancier, as PJ Media makes its play to become a social media enterprise. That's the road I've diverged from. I can't be your social media website.

I've redefined my task as something I can do alone, not that I'm alone. I've got Meade — the commenter I married — walking with me every step of the way. I've got all the joy I can handle, and maybe it is joy at being comment-free. I'm a less is more kind of person. My own version of that slogan is: Better than nothing is a high standard. I do notice and take joy in the negatives that I'm free of. That's called freedom, and comment-free is a kind of freedom.

ADDED: I said it back in 2004:

Why do you blog? > To live freely in writing.

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Althouse without comments.

Take the poll.

ADDED: The poll is radically unscientific. Those who have stopped reading because the comments are gone should not be here to take the poll. Everyone choosing the last option — "Without the comments, this blog means nothing to me" — is confessing to lying. Those 265 voters (out of 2,071 total) might be expressing anger or lobbying for the return of the comments. Telling me what I write doesn't matter except as a jumping off platform for commenters doesn't work as an argument, directed at me, to bring back comments.

I needed help dealing with the overwhelming proliferation of commenters who intended to ruin the blog — that is, commenters who thought of my work as nothing, or, really, worse than nothing, and hoped to achieve their goal of getting me to nothing.

The 345 people who voted to say that they "feel aggrieved" and see what I did as "wrong" also fail to speak appealingly to me. They are perhaps wrapped up in their own experience and unwilling to see what I went through. They might like the endless party restarted, but their lack of interest in what it's been like for me shows why the party had to end, abruptly on one terrible night, and why I've got to go forward solo.

Those who voted in the bottom 2 categories — more than the ones who voted in the top categories, the supportive answers — reinforce me in my decision to go it alone here.

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Althouse without comments.

Althouse without comments.
	The comments are gone? I didn't notice.
	Comments or no comments, I read the posts, which were always the main thing here.
	I used to spend a lot of time in the comments, but it's fine without comments.
	It's a rough transition, but I'm still reading and will see how it goes.
	Cutting off comments was wrong, I feel aggrieved, and I'll read here only grudgingly.
	Without the comments, this blog means nothing to me.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: How is it possible that anyone can pick the last option? A conundrum!

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"Each post you make seems to invite conversation, yet allowing none, creates a constipation of thought."

Emails a reader who — when the comments were on — commented under the pseudonym Salamandyr. I'm blogging this because I think poop is funny. And because I've already used the tag "excrement" once this morning, quoting Greil Marcus's famous question — reviewing Bob Dylan's "Self Portrait" — "What is this shit?"

So Salamandyr's saying "Turning off comments was a dreadful mistake that I hope you'll reconsider."

[Y]our writing style invites comments.  Each post you make seems to invite conversation, yet allowing none, creates a constipation of thought.  

Yeah, that was the problem. Too much pooping in the comments! Why would your complaining about constipation convince me to reopen? This is Althouse, not Shithouse. But some people didn't seem to notice, didn't care, or had their own delusions of redesigning the place.

Previously, even if I choose not to type out my comments, the ability to, invites me to think about what you wrote, to consider it in more detail, to create a dialogue with your post.  This oftentimes made your post all the more memorable.  

And the difference now is what? That when you think the thoughts the post prompts, the fact that you could put it in writing, next to my writing, and now you can't, impedes a mental process that never emerged in writing anyway? To stick with your metaphor, if it's constipation, you've got constipation in both situations, and what's bothering you is that there's no toilet available.

Then what the commenters wrote in response to your post, made it even more memorable.  Every comment reinforced what your writing [sic], made it that much more prominent.  

That's where you are wrong — wrong in a way that crucial is to me, as I explained right here. If you take the trouble to read that, tell me — or tell your constipated brain — whether you saw or took the trouble to look for the 15 topics and whether you think there's the slightest chance that if the comments had been open, the commenters would have explored them and, if some did, whether the writing about the 15 topics would outweigh the writing about how Bob Dylan's voice is bad and I write about Bob Dylan too much. See why I'm not feeling "reinforced"?

I might spend an hour reading your post, reading the comments, thinking about how they relate to your post, whether they successfully rebut your point, support it, or were irrelevant....

Now, that sounds constipated. It's dangerous to sit on the pot that long. Don't you know that's what killed Elvis?

If you choose not to re-open comments, I'm sure your writing will change, become more declarative, less inviting....

You're sure? Why are you sure? Do you need to deposit your answer to those questions to benefit from thinking about them?

Whatever you choose, I'll probably still read you.  You are smart, educated, and have interesting opinions.  But without comments, I find myself visiting your site less often during the day, and spending less time there when I do, and spending less time considering your posts.  

Good! Keep it moving. It's much healthier.

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"Actually, I'm finding that, when I click over [to] the other site where your commenters have migrated, the things they have to say aren't really very interesting..."

"... (and I never did understand what the name-calling directed towards 'Inga' was all about), and when I think back, the comment sections were something of a trap -- I'd hope to have, or read, some interesting dialog about the topic, but it never really happened very much. The 'create your own blog' approach is challenging, but imaginary readers are tough to write for.  In any case, in the same way as I seldom buy treats from the grocery store, because I have a hard time eating them in moderation (I tell the kids: if I buy the chocolate ice cream, you'll have a bowl now, and I'll eat the rest tonight after you're in bed -- so let's just go to the ice cream place instead), please keep the comments off."

That's from Jane the Actuary, who actually did start her own blog, Jane the Actuary. If you go over there and read it, will it save her from the fate of writing for "imaginary readers"? She'll still have to imagine you to write for you. From the beginning on this blog, I wrote for myself. I wrote about what I was reading and I wrote to see what I thought. It was a way of thinking. Since Meade moved in, I also write for him, often saying "New post alert" and then hearing what he thinks, often as he reads it aloud (and helps me find typos and hard-to-grasp phrases).

That reminds me of something Vladimir Nabokov said in 1966, in answer to the question "What is your greatest pleasure in writing?"

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries... The next pleasure is of reading it to your wife. She and I are my best audience, you see. I should say my main audience. After that, when the thing is published, I do imagine a number of people whom I like, whom I admire, with whom I feel close kinship. It is nice to think that those people are reading that, perhaps at this very instant. But that's about all. I don't care about the general public.

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"I understand the value of free speech zones, and I respected that, and I respected you for providing it, while at the same time not thinking that I wouldn't want to wade in there."

Another reader emails about the closing of the comments section at Althouse. Here's the full text:

I probably commented on your blog between four and six times a year, but read it daily. I bothered with reading the comments about once a week but I always faced the problem of distinguishing between the few interesting comments and the sea of slime. I understand the value of free speech zones, and I respected that, and I respected you for providing it, while at the same time not thinking that I wouldn't want to wade in there. Then what do I think of shutting down the comments?...  I'll admit that I found it kind of interesting to imagine that there was some kind of community existing underneath it all. Even besides the most obvious example, some commenters seemed to have developed real relationships with each other. But there was so little of that left, and so much ugliness. The main reason I read your blog is because the perpetual, cruel challenging of dogmas, frameworks, questions, heuristics, and assumptions which eventually has come to seem not so much cruel as a playful and even joyful kind of investigative destruction. I read Instapundit, though I know what Glenn is going to say, because I want to know what Glenn is reading. I read Jonah Goldberg, though I often know what he is going to say, because I like seeing how he'll say it, how he'll manage to drag Cosmo into it. But I read Althouse because even though I spend my professional life thinking about political philosophy it still challenges me to rethink things and keep challenging the conventional wisdom. For that, the comments don't make a difference.

Thanks!

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"Oh my my my.... leave the comments turned OFF. Please. I wasn't sure at first..."

"... but reading and thinking about what Althouse has to say without the clamorous din of too many commenters yelling about what they thought she'd said (I know I know I didn't have to read them) is so much better. The vlog was delightful. It was past time for some of the commenters to be stopped from using the comment section to fight, bicker, converse with, and insult each other and honestly with Althouse's type of post, commenters [would] sometimes distract from the message. I'll miss Freeman Hunt and a few others, but maybe they'll start their own blog someday. Maybe some of the others won't."

Email from one reader.

And here's another, from a different reader (hot link added):

NEVER START ACCEPTING COMMENTS AGAIN! For the sake of my sanity, please don’t! In recent times, whenever I read a comment chain, I found myself slipping into madness, like R.M. Renfield waiting for the arrival of the “master.” I was an addict. I wanted the shit so bad it didn’t matter if the bulk of the comments were meaningless garbage contributing nothing to the discussion of the topic. I needed my fix, got my hit and lost my way.

Ann then Ann intervened and axed the comments. She saved (metaphorically) my life.

For what it’s worth, Ann’s output is up, her topics of greater breadth and moment than ever and I’m enjoying reading her blog again, just as I did back in 2007.

If you really need a fix of the old stuff, you can see some of the my erstwhile commenters mixing it up on Lem's place. For the most part, they are demonstrating why it's better not to have that material here. And then there's the occasional comment like this, from "Eileen Lurker" (the 463rd comment in this thread):

I think I've finally read every single comment on this thread.

I really don't know why. Glutton for punishment, I guess....

I love all you guys, and as one of the 90% who almost never commented but always read at althouse, I was actually very excited to come here and see all my favorite names show up.

I'm really not interested in meeting anyone; I just like the way a lot of you think, and appreciate the depth and good humor that often underlies the discussion. I love -- love! -- the fact that so many of you see things "outside the box," and it interests and challenges me in ways I genuinely enjoy. In that sense, Althouse was the perfect leader for the discussion, since she was unafraid to challenge the conventional take on any topic that caught her eye.

I don't know why things changed, but it was a very rapid and unsettling devolvement. Maybe it's just not possible to get that back, but isn't there room for that on the internet? Can't there be a place that's about ideas, and not so much personalities, at least in the sense of truly knowing each other IRL?

I especially don't get the flame throwers, who never seem to add anything to the discussion at all, just name-calling and accusation and innuendo. Why? What's the value there? I don't get it. It's not about whether the commenters here like each other personally, at least that's not what attracts me. It's your *ideas,* and the way you express them. Maybe if I knew you personally I'd be repelled, and horrified that I let you and your ideas into my home (as it were).

But see, the beauty of this is that I never *have* to let you into my home. It's about how you think about a topic that interests me, and how that makes me think in turn; and that's all I really need to know in order to love coming here. So maybe you really *are* a dog. But if you put an idea out there that gets me to think, I'm grateful. It's fun. It's interesting. I really don't want more than that.

I'd always wanted to be a commenter at althouse -- my goodness, you've all provided fodder for many a discussion at my home! I'd love to see if I could keep up with you all, and maybe even add something to the discussion. But the risk appears to be high; and the nasty infection appears to have followed you all here.

Ugly, ugly stuff. Why? Really, why?

You know, I would have allowed all that ugliness to continue, and it wasn't the reason I suddenly shut off the comments the day I did. There was a more specific problem that had to be dealt with. It's been explained, but those who are grousing about my cutting off the comments don't seem to understand. Responding to people who don't (or won't) understand things had long been a distracting problem, quite aside from the ugliness and the outright hostility to me from people who were camped in my comments, stinking up the place. But, as I said, I would have continued to host the comments, because I liked seeing comments and loved some of the commenters, if it hadn't been for the more specific problem that I don't want to talk about.

Now, I see their continual expression of ill-will toward me, and I'm glad to have my distance. If they really loved commenting here and wanted to come back, they should have talked about how they could help me restore the conversation in a way that could work. Instead they showed how much they were part of the problem, and how they didn't really even like me. It's been an enlightenment, and it's affected how I write here. I've enjoyed the comments-free space, and I hope I'm providing better material for those who want to read what I have to say. If you want to talk back, I accept and read email and (as you see above) publish some of it.

Alternatively, start your own blog.

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"She talks kinda lazy/And people say she she's crazy/And her life's a mystery..."

"Oh, but Love grows where my Rosemary goes/And nobody knows like me...."

At Meadhouse this morning, we danced to "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" right after we said our "Hail, Mary"... Hail Mary, full of (a conversation about) grace....

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I answer questions from readers.

Thanks for sending in some questions, as requested earlier (here). The topics range from whether the feds will prosecute Zimmerman to 6 yes-or-no questions about ending the comments section.



ADDED: This video makes me look really sunburned. In addition to using sunscreen all the time, I guess I need to adjust the color on the videos.

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"I wish Ann would make the dating clear regarding her BloggingHeads conversation with Bob Wright."

"If that conversation happened over the last few weeks it would seem to me prima facie evidence that Bob is either being willfully obtuse, or else he's really, really NOT paying attention."

So writes a reader in email about my post last night, where I introduced the Bloggingheads clip with this sentence:

And I said a lot of what I wanted to say back on March 31, 2012, in this diavlog with Bob Wright — resisting the political exploitation and excessive emotion around the case...

Back on March 31, 2012... How clear am I supposed to be?!

I'm posting about this now to make a point about the problem of comments and the benefits of going forward without them. I continually faced criticisms and demands for clarifications like that one, and it took energy to respond or to resist responding. That energy could have gone into reading new material and putting up new posts. I had comments for 9 years, and I estimate that I've spent over 3,000 hours concentrating on handling that sort of thing. That's really the equivalent of 2 years on a full-time job.

I find that shocking.


I'm genuinely sorry to lose the good commenters, as I've said repeatedly, and I don't regret the time I spent reading and engaging with them. The 3,000 hours number doesn't refer to that time, only to the time spent explaining or resisting explaining things to people who were not paying the respect of reading what I had taken the time to write. I know some of the old commenters like to say that this blog was all getting off the front page and into the comments. That hasty jump saved them time, but it cost me.

AND: When I did go into the comments over things like this and told people that if they'd read the post carefully they'd see they'd missed or misread something, I'd look pissy or schoolmarmish and that became a whole other matter to needle me about. What a time sink!

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"Meade will read this Comment to Ann and Ann Will Sigh. It Could Have Been Hers."

"One woman's refuse out the car window is another man's idea of making amends."

Okay... that's another approach to the end of comments, somehow creating another place where the same commenters can congregate and comment like they did back here in the old days when I had comments. Contrast that to Henry's approach — in the previous post.

ADDED: Meade comments at the first link, riffing on betamax who'd said: "Naked Bob Dylan Robot says: There is Eskimo Pain Deep in my Mid-Western Vowels, rumbles, gurgles: all the Pigeons Will Come to Me."

Vowels and bowels of angel hair
And Eskimo Pie hassles in the air
And pigeons pooping everywhere
I've looked at blogs that way

But now I'm simply paranoid
The spiders make me so annoyed
The many words I couldn't avoid
Blogs got in my way

I've looked at blogs from both sides now
From front and back, from kòu and tóu
It's blogs' intrusions I recall
I really don't like blogs at all

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"The traveler never gets there."

Says Henry, commenting on last night's post about the traveler/tourist distinction.

Henry is a reader of this blog who has commented in the comments section here, back when my blog had comments, and who listened to what I said here:

I'm not going to endlessly discuss why I had to shut off comments on this blog. If anyone wants to argue with me...

Argue or otherwise talk to me...

... they can open up their own blog, write their comment there, link to me, and send me the link. I'll interact with them if they write well and say something interesting and not the same old thing that bogged down my comments section. That's essentially what Glenn [Reynolds] has done over the years — outsourcing the commenting. The would-be good commenters are to be bloggers themselves, and they need to show their stuff and be linkable, not hop on the high-readership platform that he's built up.

Or the semi-high-readership that I built up. It was, I said, time to run free of the semi-comfy home here at Althouse... time to travel... and never get there. I'm not there. I'm still traveling, and this next stretch of the road is narrow and rocky, and it's just me and Meade here in our little 2-seater. We can't drive a big busload over the terrain ahead.

As Henry said in his email to me, sharing that first link, above, it was perfectly easy to set up a Blogger blog. It might take one minute, and then you're off. Don't sit there in that old broken-down bus wondering when it will start up again. Climb out, stick out your thumb, and Google will whiz by presently and give you a ride.



It's a cool ride, and who knows where you'll go... and never get there.

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"Okay, then, I've given Glenn some material to get."

"We'll see how that goes."

Said I, 3 days ago, responding to Instapundit's long post in which he said, "Ann is a thoughtful and open-minded and smart woman, but at some level I feel like she doesn’t really get it." I've heard nothing back, not that Glenn needs to spend his time interacting with me, but by writing a long post in which he accused me of being a not-getting-it — albeit "smart" — woman, he created the impression of an invitation to a back-and-forth. Now, I'm left to interpret silence. I could say: I guess he doesn't get it. But I suspect — as my linked post insinuates repeatedly — that he knows I'm right, and he doesn't want to have to say it.

Confronted by silence over there, I'll link to Roy Edroso:

One of the things I've noticed about the famously libertarian Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds is that, while he claims to be pro-choice, he seems annoyed that anyone would defend abortion rights and delighted whenever someone tries to restrict them. Among recent examples...

Examples elided.

The guy's some advocate.

Partly, I suppose, this comes out of his whole men's-rights schtick about how women are oppressing men, which he recently took to such lengths ("When people talk about 'reproductive freedom,' they generally mean women’s reproductive freedom") that he ticked off his usual fellow traveller [sic] Ann Althouse, leading to a spat and resulting in a rare long Perfesser post full of paranoid gas ("we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males"), whining ("noting the unfairnesses involved, is not 'victimology' — though given how successful women have been in obtaining power via victimology, no one should be surprised if men start to give it a try"), and just plain bullshit ("When Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control..."). Someone who actually thinks this way is bound to consider abortion some kind of illegitimate special right because men can't have one.

Roy's perception that I'm Glenn's "usual fellow traveller" is off, but not uncommon. I think this distorted impression has partly come from the comments section, which had become dominated by right-wing voices, perhaps folks who arrived via Instapundit links. Some of these people got very irritable after the same-sex marriage cases came down, and they really couldn't handle my criticism of the "men's reproductive rights" arguments.

Ah, but that's another matter. I'm not going to endlessly discuss why I had to shut off comments on this blog. If anyone wants to argue with me, they can open up their own blog, write their comment there, link to me, and send me the link. I'll interact with them if they write well and say something interesting and not the same old thing that bogged down my comments section. That's essentially what Glenn has done over the years — outsourcing the commenting. The would-be good commenters are to be bloggers themselves, and they need to show their stuff and be linkable, not hop on the high-readership platform that he's built up.

FROM THE EMAIL: Reader A.A. writes:

Sorry you guys had to shut down the playroom. I don't blame you.

I'm no doctrinaire conservative; I'm a libertarian, and share the Professor's views on some of the hot-button issues. But what really rankled me in the last kerfuffle was the tone of misogyny and hatefulness on the part of the usual suspects.

Stuff like:

Women are not essentially honest.

I say this is proof of the superiority of men. We're just better humans, and we vote with our brains.

Do we really expect people who routinely fake orgasms and then brag about it to be honest?

And so on ... and that was just picking out a frew from the first couple screens of the first post about the Slate piece. Things got progressively more vile (and shockingly personal, with attacks on both Meade and Althouse and their first marriages and children).

In all honesty, though I enjoy reading Instapundit, his wife's blog has become a haven for disaffected and angry men, and her book has become a kind of bloody shirt for them to wave. That kind of attitude was what hijacked the commentariat. That viciousness, against women in general and the hosts in particular, kept me away from Althouse until today, and I just wanted to say how very sorry I am that this happened.

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"Hey you guys... On the comments ban.... I don't blame you."

"I stopped commenting here much because there didn't seem to be a point to it," emails Sonicfrog.

Where there used to be actual discussions, now you only got yelling matches where exchanging ideas was not the purpose; it was simply a contest to see who could be the most nasty and argumentative. The comments section devolved into a contest to see who could be the most bitchy, basically.

I'm not an advocate of making the "no comments" rule permanent, though not having to police the comments section would certainly free you guys up for other more enjoyable things.  Maybe go 3 or 4 months with no comments, then turn them back on selectively and see if you get a fresh start with civility, or you end up with the same old rabble....  Would be an interesting experiment.

Meanwhile, now that Ann is not going to have to spend so much time sifting through the comments....  Maybe now she can again collaborate with the Electric Six and make another music video!!!!! 

Take care:

Sonicfrog!

PS. I'm really glad they never connected Chris to that severed hand a few years ago! He really got away with one there!!!  :-)

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