How A Perfectly Normal Person Became a Right Wing Blog Pundit

Once upon a time I had some online friends and aquaintances, who were funny, smart, lively people. And then 9/11 “happened,” and some of these people changed. (Maybe some of you only know Jeff Jarvis as a media consultant and Google fan!) One of them was Michele Catalano. Today she describes what happened: “Something snapped. I was spending almost all my free time blogging. Blogging about war and terrorism and fear and death and sadness. A hatred welled up inside me. I knew what it was. I knew where the hate and blackness came from and what it was about. But in the post 9/11 world I found a convenient way to project all the bile without turning it back toward myself. I fell in step with the people who were known then as the warbloggers.” It was pretty amazing to watch, honestly! It felt like the world was turning inside out. The surprise ending is that humor writer Neal Pollack is the one who smacked her back to her senses, so, God bless. It’s stories like this, in part, that make me laugh at the people who are frothing about OMG MUSLIM GROUND ZERO MOSQUE-particularly since those people today who are screaming the loudest despise New York City at heart anyway.