The First Amendment says nothing about the right to be published

I’m really struggling with this one. Here’s the question:

Should newspapers publish every letter to the editor and every comment on every letter online, no matter how vile, insensitive, ignorant, petulant, or mean?”

I was the victim of this editor-less trend twice in the last couple of years: Once when I suggested privately that Karl Rove was possibly not the best choice of keynote speaker for a real estate convention (and someone leaked it to the press), and another when I was speaking out against the repeal of a local indoor smoking ban. The unmoderated online vitriol that followed got so bad that friends began asking me about my security system. I was called a commie, anti-American, self-centered, narcissistic, domineering, do-gooder, self-righteous, shmenah (?), creep, perverted, a-hole, nagging nanny, tyrannical, omnipotent moral busy-body, tormentor, arrogant jerk, rich social elitist, and [mother of] lawn apes. When it was revealed that I was a real estate agent, they added histrionic, radical, greedy, two-faced, unethical, con artist, and puke in the mouth.

Six strategies for staying safe (and private) on Facebook

I keep hearing people recount horror stories that a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend’s dentist read in Paranoid Online Weekly (mailed to you for privacy purposes) saying that being on Facebook is tantamount to handing your keys, Social Security number, credit cards, safe deposit key, bank PIN, stock certificates, bearer bonds, G spot, blood type, and personal diary over to all the thieves of the world, then thanking them for the opportunity.

If you have ever left a key under your mat, this one’s for you.

Now that was REALLY boring!

The kinda fun, sorta perplexing, and occasionally annoying thing about being a blog writer is that you never know who’s reading unless they’re part of that two percent who chime in regularly. Sometimes that means you forget there are other people out there… well, not really forget, but write like nobody’s reading… and it’s not until you get the smack up the side of the head that I got this week that you remember: You. Are. Not. Alone. (Insert eerie music here.)

After a couple of semi-incendiary essays last week (this one and that one, for those of you who fell behind a couple of installments), I decided to write about the fabulous, colorful, gotta-have-it-and-never-wanna-lose-it theater, my heart and soul, my reason for being, the very air that I breathe. I had been to a play the night before, had inhaled some greasepaint, and was reminded by the empty opening night seats how desperate local venues can become during difficult economic times, and thought it might be a good idea to pen something supportive and encouraging to help fill some seats. I expected to hear back from my actor friends about their local show dilemmas, from my political friends about cutbacks in all things artistic and/or non-profit, and from my family asking, “So when are you going to be in a play?”