A response to this post over in Community.

My pet peeve isn't those folks who have abstracts, but those who don't. The Subject line will read something like "Kennedy trumped by Hillary!" Open it and it says <here>. Nothing else, no summary, no precis, just "here".

Open that and there is a raw blog, with 4,000,000 self-absorbed unedited pages of talking points traded by all in the field of right-wing comments on Kennedy, Hillary, Democrats. One is supposed to read the entire output of that bloggers life, along with all his friends comments, links to every right-wind site imaginable, all talking points they have been able to think of and have been fed by the White House and DoD, and all right-wing columnists, because the poster hasn't made his own point.

And then the inevitable audacity when one comments on a few of the points - "Obviously you didn't even bother to read it!" (Well, Duh!)

"Here?" I guess that would be me. I often post things like that.

The world is full of people who will read something, then hide the source as best they can, and then tell you what they want you to think it said.

This happens in newspapers, on the Internet, on talk radio, especially in broadcast media, and in politics. A person can get as much pre-digested pap out there as makes them feel better about their own pre-conceived notions.

I have some faith in people's ability to look at data and arrive at conclusions on their own. It is unnerving when someone replies after I've linked to a news story or article and asks me something like, "so what are we supposed to get out of this?" Too much TV news, if you ask me.

If I link to an opinion piece, or a blog, without comment, it's because it makes a point I would like to see made, and does it well enough that I don't have to add anything.

I link to things that are easily read by somebody with reasonable reading skills. Some articles ARE long, like the "Atlantic" piece I linked to recently. If people don't have time to plow through them, I completely understand. But then don't pretend you can refute the article effectively.

If I point out that someone seems to have commented without reading my source, it's because that's true. It's because the commenter has seen the source, or the subject, and just figures it's something he or she doesn't want to know, so why bother?

Have I ever, in any of my comments on other people's posts, given the impression that I've failed to read a linked article all the way through? In fact, I often come up with more source material on the subject, including original documents, when the link was often only to a news piece on MSNBC or something.

I suppose I could come up with some kind of summation on things more often, but it just seems silly sometimes, like I'm talking to teenagers with a short attention span.