Comments on Times Articles

   I’m surprised how literate most of the comments are that are to be found in response to articles in the New York Times. Sometimes there are more than a thousand of them, occasionally even far more. Mind you I only read a small sample of them and have wondered how many readers go beyond taking in just a few. No doubt the practice would not exist if the Times could not rely on the fact that a portion of its readers desire to be heard.

   Yes, the comments are edited before they are published, a necessity when you think about it for a minute, but I don’t think that the editing converts dumb remarks into clever ones. And on the whole, what is published is, if not strictly speaking clever comments, mostly intelligent and relevant.

   I am encouraged by that entire phenomenon. No, I don’t think that these commentators are average Americans, although that is as much because I don’t know just what average Americans are like.  But they are representative of my fellow citizens, as much or, rather, more than those who make it into the marriage columns of your local paper.