But my joy was short-lived. By the time I had even been made aware of the piece’s presence in cyberspace, it had garnered more than a dozen comments. The final tally was around 170. While some of the responses were positive, most were not. Over the next few days, I would be accused of self-hatred, self-importance, self-parody, self-aggrandizement, and more. Gawker, in perhaps a knowing gesture of ironic self-effacement, blasted the piece for its “pointless journalism.” Numerous blogs mocked my sententiousness and pretension. Commenters speculated on everything from my upper-middle-class upbringing (not true) to my poor performance in bed (hard to say—writers are notoriously unreliable self-critics).

Naturally, I was a bit stunned. An unpublished poet and fiction writer, and an occasionally published essayist, I had had relatively little public exposure to my work to that point. But the volume, not to mention venom, of the response to this piece was unprecedented.

Much of the haters’ enthusiasm seemed to derive from a seemingly innocuous paragraph, early in the story, in which I expressed frustration with certain cultural trends popular in places like Portland, where I used to live. The subhead of the article refers to “yuppie liberals,” a useful enough approximation of what I was trying to convey. Part of the motivation for leaving Portland for the farms, I explained, was our creeping frustration with what might be called mainstream liberalism.

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that this was a message that some Salon.com readers did not want to hear—after all, at least one part of the website emphasizes the kind of partisan, self-congratulatory liberalism that I had been complaining about. And while I could understand, intellectually, that the attacks were not personal—that my stupidly-grinning mug on the cover of the magazine was simply an easy target for the rantings of frustrated lives—I still felt blindsided by the rancor my piece had provoked.

But then it did get personal. One of the haters acquired my e-mail address (probably through my personal blog), writing that since he had tried to addend an angry note to one of my Rumpus pieces without success, he wanted to make sure I got the message personally. (In summary: Get a Job, Hipster Scum.) All of a sudden my blog, mostly viewed by friends and family, saw a surge in traffic, the source another blog called, “Die Hipster.” In a comment thread there, the anonymous e-mailer had posted my personal e-mail address, my blog URL, and links to other articles I’d written. Someone else mockingly linked my father’s four-year-old obituary notice. Others opined about my girlfriend—her race and ethnicity as well as other, more intimate topics. Finally, someone else (hopefully not a Jewish relative of mine) called me the “opposite of a mensch” and a “perversion of development.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that some of this triggered deep-set insecurities. After all, what poet doesn’t sometimes fear that his development has been perverted? What writer doesn’t feel shame about the work she does? And what person on the Left doesn’t often feel like a fraud, “squatting in one of the handful of prefabricated subject positions proffered by capital,” as Adam, the poet protagonist of Ben Lerner’s excellent recent novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, puts it?

As I reflected more, I realized the nasty commenters had been right about at least one thing: I had been sheltered, as an author, at least. My previous web publications had appeared on literary sites like The Collagist and Bookslut, where comments are disallowed, and The Rumpus, which moderates their threads vigorously. As a result, I could write a personal essay, as I did for The Rumpus a year ago, about my state of demoralized unemployment and not worry that I would be pilloried as a slacker because of it. Or I could weigh in on the heady topic of the politics of work (or in my case, idleness), as I did ten months later, without feeling like I had to apologize for my lack of comprehensiveness. The essay would simply serve as the catalyst for a discussion, I knew, one that might very well commence in the comment thread below.

Which isn’t to say that Rumpus readers never challenged me. In response to the latter essay, for example, which shamelessly advocates for idleness, one reader pointed out that I had failed to take gender differences into account. Historically charged with child-raising and other domestic tasks, women often did not have the luxury to just be idle. Another reader took issue with Bertrand Russell’s prescription of four hours of work per day. How could one survive financially working so little? Both were valid points and obviously worthy of discussion.

At Salon.com, though, by the time I had even caught my breath, the conversation spiralled out of control. Hate had responded to hate. The pettiness proliferated. The story I had tried to tell was thrust to the backburner. Most disturbing, though, was that the points I had been hoping to raise—about the viability of organic farming, the problems with urban living, liberals’ complicity in systems they claim to abhor—were largely ignored. Instead, the argument centered around negative speculation about me: my privilege, my hypocrisy, my work habits and finances. I had become their punching bag, their piñata, the commenters flailing gleefully to score points against whatever kind of person they had imagined me to be.

“An unmoderated fray is no comments,” the blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates said recently in an interview on NPR, and I think that’s basically right. I can’t help but feeling a little cheated by the response my Salon.com piece received. I had spent a lot of time and energy on refining my argument and revising the language with the hopes it would resonate with readers fed up with their city lives. I had been looking forward to the discussion, even to a debate. What I got was an earful of errant hate and manifold attempts to discredit me personally.

As I look back on the experience, I mostly feel lucky. Lucky to have found an online community like The Rumpus, where voices that only want to harm are actively excluded. The result is a place that plainly attracts people who seek refuge from the petty, reactionary voices that dominate so much of our public discourse. We, those of us who frequent The Rumpus, come here to share our stories, art, and ideas among the online equivalent of friends—even those who respectfully and thoughtfully disagree. We expect others in the community to hold us accountable—after all, there is a converse danger in being too cuddly, too undiscerning, too automatic in our support. But the space exists in part because we exclude those voices who would infect it with hate. That’s how creativity can be cultivated—not only with gung-ho support, but with meaningful, relevant commentary.

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Bella Santorum is the eighth child (one prior child died when just two hours old) of presidential candidate and Internet punch line Rick Santorum and his wife Karen Garver Santorum. Rick Santorum, though charming and Midwestern on the campaign trail, though given to a humbling fashion tendency—the sweater vest—that has gotten most men a beat down in the middle school years, is among the more doctrinaire and dangerous politicians of the moment, right up there with Sam Brownback or Jon Kyl or Mitch McConnell. He never met a social issue that didn’t require from him a knee-jerk one liner that would turn heads with its oversimplification and vacuity. He never met an earmark he wouldn’t try to bring home to Pittsburgh. Though he is not as preening and narcissistic as Newt Gingrich, he is just as willing to say anything. And Karen Garver Santorum once wrote a book on children’s manners, called Everyday Graces. Before that, though, before marrying Rick, the guy whose last name also refers to a frothy mixture of lube and fecal material etc., she was living out of wedlock with an obstetrician who provided abortions. I’m betting that in those days she was a different Karen.

I find hypocrisy and mendacity among politicians somehow reassuring. It goes to show that anyone can be bought, and that in politics the price for which people can be bought is usually rather low. These things make the grim politics of the present less surprising.

However, when I think about how much contempt I have for Rick Santorum and how sure I am that somewhere in him lurks an anally-compulsive disco boy—why all the comments about how horrible it would be if people were allowed to do anything— I then start thinking about Bella. Bella is three years old and was born with Trisomy 18, which is a genetic condition not unlike Down Syndrome, but with more serious health complications. The list of potentially lethal effects of Trisomy 18, in fact, is rather terrifying. Half of children born with Trisomy 18 die upon birth, and 90% die within the first year. Santorum himself has indicated that while he was campaigning in Iowa at the end of 2011, Bella was having a lot of trouble breathing and had to be sent home to Virginia to be cared for by a nurse.

Now: when Bella was in utero Santorum and his wife presumably were able to have an amniotic fluid test to determine that Bella had a genetic abnormality, which Bella was more likely to have, because of Karen Santorum’s age at the time of the pregnancy, and they were able to decide to carry Bella to term because that is consistent with Santorum’s positions on abortion. More power to them. When my daughter was in utero, my wife and I decided not to get the amniotic fluid test because of the risk of miscarriage for “geriatric” moms, and because we agreed we would be content to have a child with Down’s Syndrome (Trisomy 21), if it came to that, which it did not. I commend the Santorums for carrying Bella to term and for caring for her now that she is here. Some people are not physically like the majority of us, and yet we can still love them deeply.

This is the sort of thing that bears repeating. Even when you are Pro Choice in all cases.

Still, Just as I found Sarah Palin’s use of Trig on the campaign trail in 2008 slightly sinister, so have I found Bella’s appearances in Iowa sinister, and I’m glad she is back in Virginia where her breathing problems can be monitored carefully. But as a parent myself I am afraid I am also thinking about how keen is the absence of a child especially during a professional year as demanding as what Santorum is going through now, assuming Santorum is capable of human emotions. Yes, he has six other children, one of whom, an older daughter, acts as a spokesman for her dad. This daughter recently indicated that the family carries around lapel buttons depicting Bella, so that she is uppermost in their thoughts no matter where they are. Publicity stunt? Or grief manifested?

And what does Bella think about exactly? And how often is she affixed to the breathing apparatus? Does she think about the discomfort of the mask? Does she miss her parents? Are there certain repetitive images, screensavers, let’s say, that are capable of keeping her mesmerized for hours? Will there ever be an age when Bella Santorum can understand party politics? Will she respond to love? Will she, like a friend of mine who has Trisomy 21, love Elvis? And when they say that those kids who survive a childhood with Trisomy 18 will “live into adulthood,” what does that mean? Will she live out a complete term? Or will she devastate her parents and her siblings down the road? Does she realize that there is something about her that is unlike other children? What will the Santorums do with her if her dad wins the nomination? (Unlikely, I know.) Does Bella feel the pressures of the campaign? Does she care what her dad does? Will she welcome him home when he loses? How did she feel in that one impressive publicity photo she did with her dad, where he seems to have John Boehner’s tan on? Was that love enough for her? And is she named after Queen Isabella? Or Isabella Adjani? Wouldn’t we all love Bella? If Bella were sitting in our lap?

Easy to loath Santorum. Easy to love that Internet buffoon that Dan Savage has made of him. But what about Bella? Have you thought about Bella?

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“Welcome to a place where even beer runs are a matter of life and death. As the Iraq War draws to an official close, Joshuah Bearman tells the funny and poignant story of the real-life Baghdad Country Club, a bar in the Green Zone during the conflict’s bloodiest years. Against all odds, its proprietors struggle to keep their raucous watering hole safe and well-stocked as the insurgency rages outside.”

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From childhood dreams to devastating addiction and brain damage, reporter John Branch’s bloody but beautiful profile of “The Boogeyman” is not to be missed.

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This ridiculous anti-piracy video (which compares bootlegging digital media to child labor & drug trafficking) is basically Reefer Madness, 2011.

Google’s revenue this year is more than the GDP of the 28 smallest countries combined… and other interesting tidbits.

Bacteria-powered lights. Bacteria-powered lights!!!

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Apparently your printer could be hacked and set on fire.

Facebook’s about to go public.

The British Library just opened its online archive of over 300 years of newspapers. Awesome.

If you look at one internet video today, it should be this inflatable soft undulating robot.

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Apple now owns several porn domains that could potentially be affiliated with the company’s trademarks. Somehow I doubt they’ll be making their own iPhone porn.

The US public is willing to accept experts’ consensus on climate change, for the most part… sadly, most of the public just doesn’t know what the consensus is.

Maybe I need this analog turntable for watching animated GIFS, yes?

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First of all, that’s what she said.  Secondly, Fleshbot’s for sale!

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The horrifying crisis unfolding at Penn State reminds us, yet again, of the carelessness of language used when we write about sexual violence.

In an AP article printed in the New York Times the headline reads, “2 Top Officials Step Down Amid Penn State Sex Scandal.” In countless other articles across far too many publications, journalists have also used the phrase “sex scandal” to refer to Penn State’s former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, allegedly raping and otherwise sexually abusing at least eight young boys.

A sex scandal is when, for example, a politician has an extramarital affair with a young female intern or when an evangelist preacher has an extramarital affair with a young masseur or another politician has a history of visiting escorts. In any such situation, there is (consensual) sex involved and the circumstances within which that sex was had are scandalous.

When we are talking about rape, sexual abuse, or sexual assault, and/or when these terrible acts of sexual violence occur between adults and children, we are talking about scandals of sexual violence. They are rape scandals, sexual abuse scandals, or sexual assault scandals but they are not sex scandals. Sex is consensual. Rape, sexual abuse, and sexual assault, as well as violent sexual acts forced upon children by adults are not consensual.

Additionally, focusing more on the impact this rape scandal might have on the legacy of an institution or a famed football coach instead of focusing on the impact the rape scandal (the acts of sexual violence themselves, the extensive, long term cover up, the permissive, corrupt culture that allowed the cover up to continue for more than a decade, etc.) has on the victims, is also careless and shameful.

The legacy that matters here is the one this travesty will create for victims of sexual violence who have so little incentive to come forward and name their accusers in a culture where acts of sex and sexual violence are represented synonymously. The language* used to write about sexual violence must reflect the acts of sexual violence that have been perpetrated and that language must do so without being exploitative or gratuitous. There can be no exception.

*The Dart Center offers an excellent set of resources for journalists on writing about sexual violence and trauma.

***

You can read Roxane’s first “Vocabulary Primer” here.

Also, if you haven’t already read it, please don’t miss Brian Spears’ excellent essay “The Spirit of Violent Lamentation.”

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