A few months ago, I began reading the blog off the website of the conservative magazine Commentary. I noticed this week that they have decided to close their comments section, and it struck me as exactly the kind of thing we should have come to expectfrom the clan of the elitists that make up so much of the media and higher education…
Anyway…below is an email I sent to them about it:
“Contentions is just another shuttered stall in the marketplace of ideas.”
I’m sorry to say I agree completely.
Closing down the comments section makes the organization look like just another elitist enclave seeking to voice their opinion and theirs alone, but worse, with a proven, demonstrated disdain for the voice of the common people.
I’ve been reading the comments section daily now for a few months, and I have seen far worse sections at other sites. I’ve seen a good forum at the Korea Herald shut down completely in 2002 as the trolls really did take over with a specific purpose of destroying the forum.
When that forum was shut down, I understood why and agreed with the decision.
This move by Commentary is a different matter. It has done much damage to the organization’s value in my eyes. The site bookmark will come down from my browser, and my thought of subscribing to the magazine is wiped away, and the only time I’ll check back on the magazine or blog is if it is linked in a particularly good post I find elsewhere…
It is interesting to consider that after coming across the site and blog, I went to find the books written by Podhoretz.
Seeing the comments section taken down made me think of the several times in those books where the author talks about taking part in a discussion forum with other notable speakers on top intellectual and political issues of the day…
…I guess those didn’t include a Q&A session either… Townhalls are useless, right? All you get in them (or the net result of them) is chaff…I guess…
That is why another commenter on this thread was correct in saying this move by Commentary is old style media: where the goal is to put people on stage (in front of the camera) to tell people what they should think, and a “good exchange” of ideas was one in which elitists on the other side were allowed a microphone —- and the audience was meant to remain quiet and impressed…
Thankfully, the Internet has broadened the forum and by doing so broadened our understanding of the issues at hand, because at some point, even the most lofty of issues “above our heads” touches real life as lived by individuals – or else has no real value for the society.
If Commentary and Contentions could not endure the level of discourse I’ve seen in the comments section these last few months, the people in charge must have thin skins and a very low tolerance for an exchange of thought.
In short, the move is simply that of common elitists like you find in the bastions of the left – such as the humanities departments of most universities across the land…
Which is interesting — like Commentary and Contentions – the liberal university was supposed to be a place where a full range of ideas were expressed and shared widely but have become too often places of indoctrination where those who speak out of line are hammered back into place or silenced.
The section in Bernard Goldberg’s book Bias that relates stories from the Columbia School of Journalism is an excellent example.
And Commentary has just joined those ranks by shutting down the comments section of a blog…
