by Dennis Green
So, just for the hell of it, I visited two of the marginal blogs focused on Alameda, Michele Ellson's "The Island," and Lauren Do's "Blogging Bayport Alameda." Both profess to be legitimate, journalistic news sites, not just the usual sloppy blogs we all know and sometimes love.
What I found there was a profound lack of civility, by the blogsters toward their subject matter, making bitter and personal attacks on people they don't like, such as the Interim City Manager, Anne Marie Gallant, and City Attorney Teresa Highsmith. Their snarky tone and attitude is shared by most of the posters on their discussion threads. Boy, was I a hit! I haven’t seen bullies like this since the third grade.
I also discovered what a tiny, out of touch and thoughtless minority they are, still crying in favor of Measure B, SunCal's proposal to develop Alameda Point, the former Naval Air Station, which was defeated at the polls in March, 85/15 percent of those voting. That would be about 3,000 yea voters in a town of almost 80,000 people, or about .075 percent.
I figure that those who voted for B were mostly Newbies, people who bought houses here in the last 5-10 years, and maybe they’re so angry because they paid too much. But I wasn't prepared for how insular and out of touch they really are. They are talking to themselves, and are as inarticulate as my students in Bonehead English were. They all have opinions and wild speculations, but no facts, and we all know that old saying… ”Everyone has an opinion, and opinions are like ‘armpits’ and smell just about as bad.” (Censorship mine.)
They are also uniquely unfair, most of them backing the other recently defeated initiative, the new and horrendous school parcel tax, Measure E. It would have shifted the burden away from the Gold Coast, in a regressive tax costing those McMansions no more than a poor little cottage on the West End, and the big mall little more than some local small retail businesses.
This is not the Alameda I know and love. That Alameda is good-natured, civil in it's debates and user-friendly.
The only news site that makes any sense is Alameda Action News, and the few Snarks who appear there, who persists in their arrogance and ignorance so well that no one takes them seriously, invite the good advice I once received: "Don't take the bait!"
Posters on those minority blogs don't get that, and especially the ones with pseudonyms. But that's okay. I won't miss all those Snarks, and if they show up on a site I'm still reading, I will just hope they remember that good old cop advice, "You have the right to remain silent." Otherwise, they'll just incriminate themselves!
I'm reminded of an experience I had about five years ago with writers groups. Julia Park, then editor and founding partner of the Alameda Sun where my column, Geezerville: A Wry Take On Aging, was being published every week or two, had been teaching night school, a writing class. Some of her students organized a writers group, and I was invited to join.
We were about 12 -- 15 strong, and met one Saturday morning a month. We rotated hosting and refreshment duties, and spent the morning listening to various members read a piece of work. Sometimes poetry, sometimes a short story, sometimes a chapter from a novel, a work in progress. Very bright, cordial, civil folks. I enjoyed our sessions and always had something to read.
One member lived on a houseboat, and meeting on his water craft/domicile was quite an adventure. One young woman lived in a house on the lagoon off Otis Drive, and that was fun too. We were quite a varied group, a few more women than men, one gay man, one fellow who taught at St. Mary's College, a minister, and so on.
And then I made the mistake of a lifetime. I had met a man, who seemed like a decent enough person, lively, talkative, outgoing. And I invited him to join the group. As it turned out, he was rude, argumentative, disruptive and had very little to contribute but venom. I never understood why that fellow was so angry, but within a few months, the cordial atmosphere of the writers group had been destroyed, and gradually, we disbanded.
My recent experience on the blog discussion threads reminded me of that sad time with the writers group. And how important civility is to any communal enterprise. Oddly enough, the guy who ruined the writers’ group is a regular on both those sites.
© 2010 Dennis Green
My, my Dennis! You do a remarkable job of criticizing others who simply don't agree with your point of view. Why, in just this article alone, you've called them "marginal," "bitter," "snarky," "bullies," "out of touch," "thoughtless," "insular," "inarticulate," "unfair," "arrogant," and "ignorant."
ReplyDeleteThat's hardly what I could call "good-natured" or "civil."