People reveal a lot when they get upset. When we’re calm and collected we can present whatever face we want to the outside world, but when something jars us loose from our moorings we start acting in ways that aren’t so mediated.

I think back to the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when Ann Coulter made her call for a bloody Crusade against those evil Mohammedans occupying the Holy Lands. I mean, it was just way out there. But she was upset, and not necessarily thinking about the longterm consequences of revealing that side of her personality, so she Just Did It.

But that’s really just a preliminary digression. Mrs. du Toit strikes me as being both significantly smarter and significantly less vile than Ann Coulter. But if you find it interesting to see someone start off sounding rational, and then suddenly just go off in a self-revelatory way, check out this post in her weblog, and (especially) the discussion that follows in the comments: Mind the gap.

Basically, Mrs. du Toit makes this impassioned posting about how awful it is that gay-rights advocates have managed to secure a toehold for their agenda in the public schools. Her argument is actually kind of interesting: she says she’s worried about the victimization gays will suffer during the inevitable cultural backlash.

Then Adam from words mean things shows up, disagrees with her, and things get ugly.

I don’t know; this may well be one of those things that seems more interesting to me than it does to anyone else. I’ve always been a sucker for that weird intersection of high-level intellectual discussion and visceral potty-mouth name-calling that surrounds the various never-to-be-resolved online political debates.

This entry was posted by jbc on Saturday, May 24th, 2003 at 12:22 am and is filed under love, net.kooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.