Well, then I know I’m safe. I barely make the “D List.”

This is a problem with breaking through and becoming an “A List” blog. Suddenly you are expected to respond to a lot of crap about a lot of people you don’t know or care about while dozens of people are attacking you for existing.

As for the rest of it, I picked up a whiff of it at Memeorandum and I’ve seen Atrios and NTodd talk about Goldstein. To quote the immortal Hawkeye Pierce, the instrument has yet to be invented that can measure my indifference.

Ignore trolls and they go away. I don’t care if they want to drop by as long as they stick to the topic. If they have facts I’ll listen, If they they want to rant I allow one to a customer per thread, because I pay for the storage.

I was on the news groups for an extended period and have seen flame wars that makes blogs pale by comparison.

Skippy noted that only about a dozen people knew the “vicious commenter” even existed prior to this explosion. I’d never heard of Ward Churchill until the Blight brought it up. Frankly Ward doesn’t sound very progressive and never does this woman, so I don’t understand why I’m responsible in any way for their conduct.

I was involuntarily dragged into someone else’s blogfight several years back (someone involved in the fight saw fit to start emailing me stuff), and came to one conclusion: blogfights are boring. Maybe if I found fewer outrageous offenses committed by our government, I’d be reduced to blogging about an offensive right-wing troll post found on another lefty blog. As it is, there’s no danger of that: Bush & Co. have supplied me with plenty of material.

As to your suggestion, Bryan, I don’t know; if Jeff and his buddies can’t even cope with a nasty troll on his site, I’m not sure even our armed forces could turn them into people we would want to see defending our country. I’m not a particularly brave guy, but even I can handle a troll… and I expect our troops to be at least more courageous than I am.