"I rarely read the comments at the bottom of my blogs and I almost never respond. I'm ambivalent at best about sparking a dialogue."

"The reason I don't do social writing is that occasionally I actually do read the comments. There's this one guy (hi Laurence!) who writes a comment almost every time I happen to look at them and it's almost always something along the lines of what a liberal idiot I am."

Interestingly, Laurence — that is to say, our Meade — never calls Citizen Dave (the erstwhile Mayor Dave of Madison, Wisconsin) an "idiot." That's Dave's paraphrase.

To paraphrase is to reveal the inner workings of one's own mind. If someone holds up a mirror and you say "I look like an idiot," is the mirror-holder calling you an idiot?

I've rarely read anything associated with my writing — or for that matter with online news stories or columns — that I would consider worth my time or anyone else's.

In short, if that's blogging, then I'm not doing it and never will. Blogging does not work in any useful way as a form of social intercourse. The small number of people who comment seem very angry and very bitter. Why would you want to spend your time with them?