CBC story about atheists gets over 2000 comments in 24 hours

They obviously take their religion seriously in Vancouver. Or maybe their atheism. It's the same coin they're tossing in the air, isn't it?

But those 2000 comments (closer to 2500 now) prove my point about comments becoming an independent genre in the past couple of years.

Frankly, I think the good folks at the Centre for Inquiry cooked this up as a publicity stunt. Everybody, but EVERYBODY, gets that Jim Pattison is an old-school go-to-meetin' evangelical Christian. It stands to reason that there might be some bumps in the road when you want to display your anti-God message on this God-fearing man's billboards.

So this is a real coup for the Centre for Inquiry. Got ten times the attention that a few billboards would have, and didn't have to pay a penny for it!

I suspect that at some level Mr. Pattison respects your PR savvy.

Comment culture

When I started this blog two and a half years ago, it was mostly out of frustration over never having my letters to the editor of the Globe get published. Once or twice a year I'd be sufficiently exorcised over a Globe article that I was forced to write a letter to the editor.

And while they may have published one once, overall I felt my voice was stifled.

Hence my blog.

Even a mere two and a half years ago comment sections on major news sites were closely monitored. Not any more. It's a free-for-all.

Had it been a free-for-all two and a half years ago I might never have started this blog.

The comment section after any story on a major news site has today become a wide open space for the disaffected and marginalized of every stripe to reclaim their voice.

And boy do they ever.

It has become a genre unto itself.

I'm not a part of it, nor will I be.

Basic civility has long flown the coop in that genre.

And while I've occasionally been told basic civility has been a stranger to this blog I don't think that's true.

I'm very aware that no matter what I write, a certain segment of the readership will conclude that I'm full of shit. That's especially true over at Before It's News, that hotbed of New World Order exposes that picked up this blog early on and has stuck with it since. I give them the occasional crop circle story just to try to blend in.

I fully expect folks to disagree with my perspective, but if one reader in a hundred pauses and takes another look, thinks about the point I'm making, then it's more than worth it.

And that's all I ever wanted. Tens of thousands have clicked on this blog either here or elsewhere, and that's way more than would have read an occasional letter to the editor at the Globe.