On missing the point

I recently had an essay in Salon regarding my time at the Daily Show, and how the job often put me in close contact with people I expected to hate (folks of the deranged right-wing persuasion, for the most part), but whom I’d often end up liking as people despite myself. The essay might best be summarized as a modest plea for mutual understanding, a request to look beyond someone’s political beliefs to see the human being behind the ideology.

Several friends informed me that the comments section was a bit of a horror show. I assumed that they meant I was being attacked there — perhaps for offering comfort to the enemy, or for being naive, or for writing about the subject from the privileged position of someone who had never really suffered at the hands of folks with harmful ideas and offering those nasty people a sort of unearned and cheap grace. Or perhaps for the general sin of being a fucking idiot. All of those would probably qualify as valid criticisms.

As it turns out, I am mentioned in the comments, or at least in a few of them. For the most part, though, it’s 100+ posts of people calling each other assholes. Yes, I get it, comments sections are about the lowest form of human discourse, ranking somewhere south of the things people shout at hockey referees. But one can’t but feel a sort of wry amusement (here defined as “a reflexive sentiment experienced as a sort of emotional prophylactic to avoid feelings of overwhelming sadness”) upon seeing people respond to a call for tolerance by assaulting each other online.

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