Duke lacrosse: About trolls and deletes

A reader asks:

Why is everyone who disagrees with the "anti-Brodheads" a troll? Why is it that those who disagree can't be credible if their child is not at risk? Why threaten to erase their comments?

I think this reader is well-intentioned but the questions are overblown and misstate.

Everyone who disagrees with those the reader calls the “anti-Brodheads” is not a troll. I’ve not said that; and I can’t think of anyone else here who has besides this reader who misstates.

My sense is that almost all the people who’ve spoken up here for President Brodhead are sincere and wish to converse in a civil and serious way with due respect for others.

Such people are welcome here even when I think they are very wrong: Example – this second reader who says in part:

In the early days of the LAX mess, the entire country thought the LAX players were guilty. During that time, Richard Brodhead was one of the very few voices of reason. While the media conducted what can only be described as a high-tech lynching of the entire LAX team, Brodhead went before the television cameras in countless press conferences and submitted to countless newspaper, magazine, and television interviews. He reminded everyone that there was no evidence of any rape other than the allegation of the accuser. ….

However, I do not see him getting much credit for his efforts on this website. All I can say is that people have short memories because it was not too long ago that Richard Brodhead was just about the only person in the country who was standing up for the LAX players, other than their lawyers and their own families.

This reader is speaking civilly and makes a genuine effort, IMHO, to offer a fact-based case although the facts offered are, again IMHO, in some instances wrong.

But let’s leave the “who’s right, who’s wrong” matter for another time. I sometimes on second or third reading see where I’ve been wrong, when on my first reading I thought it was the other person who was wrong.

All I want to do here is offer an example of the kind of reader comment supporting Brodhead that’s welcome here.

Now for something completely different. Please read this comment:

I think it is important to remember that it was the LAX players who created this mess, not Brodhead. I think one of the things going on here is that the families of the LAX players and their supporters feel so guilty about the damage the players have done to the reputation of the university and so angry at how the players have been treated by the justice system and by the media that they just want to lash out at others in order to assuage their own guilt, and at some point along the way, they decided to beat up on Brodhead. This would help to explain some of the overheated rhetoric and, in some cases, downright false accusations about Brodhead that I have seen on this website and some of the other websites that have been following the LAX case.

This comment by a third reader is the kind of comment I delete.

This third reader begins with an absurdity: “it was the LAX players who created this mess”

Third reader then says the “families of the LAX players and their supporters feel so guilty about the damage the players have done to the reputation of the university and so angry …. that they just want to lash out at others in order to assuage their own guilt, and at some point along the way, they decided to beat up on Brodhead.”

All third reader is doing is using psycho-babble to make mean, unsubstantiated personal attacks against the LAX players, their families and their supporters.

But third reader doesn’t end there. Third reader, who is acting just like a troll, wants everyone to know about the “downright false accusations about Brodhead that I have seen on this website and some of the other websites.” Only troll doesn’t cite any. Making the accusation is what it’s all about.

There should now be no one who doesn’t know the difference between reasoned discourse and troll ad hominems.

The good news for trolls and those who want to hear what they say is that there are so many blogs that let trolls be trolls.

The good news for the rest of you is I’ll keep deleting; and I won’t repeat again the explanations for deletions I’ve given these past two days.

If I get a question about a deletion I think is genuine, I’ll refer the questioner to my archives for the Sept. 10 – 17 time period.


John