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The Week in Dot-Comments: When readers attack
The week in review, as told by the commenters on Philly's website of record.
The Week in Dot-Comments: When readers attack
Philadelphians have been called a lot of things, but overly polite isn’t one of them. As for the loudest of the loudmouths, when their friends and family can no longer bear to listen, they head to Philadelphia’s website of record and heckle hardworking journos, sources and other commenters. Here, the week in review, as told by the dot-commenters.
It's less than two weeks until Valentine's Day — and Philly is definitely not feeling the love. Granted William Bender kind of started it with an entire story about the how entrepreneur Joe Stanfa doesn't want to his new pizzeria to be associated with his family's mob backstory. Amid the Godfather references "Leave the gun grab the cannolis" and criticisms, someone came to Stanfa's defense. "Listen all you haters, give the guy a brake. Good luck and best wishes," a mafia apologist wrote — and was promptly slammed: "an emergency brake? why don't you take a break from posting and learn some basic English? who let you out of grade school?" one griped, while another suggested, "maybe hooked on phonics could help."
Mistakes were made, no doubt. And more of them were in the comments section of a story on a proposed Rutgers-Camden merger with Rowan University. "A state run organization with all its fat and waste would come under control of a profitable private university...so [Chancellor Wendell Pritchett] and his cronies would be put out to pasture and Rutgers - Camden would be run effiicently and like a real school," one reader groused. Except, of course, as others pointed out, Rowan is, like Rutgers, a public state university — or, another way of putting it, "Are you serious or are you having difficulty making any kind of sense working off of your last remaining, functional brain cell?"
It wasn't all nonsense in the comments section this week though. A story on a man who was arrested 44 times before he was finally convicted, drew a couple creative suggestions regarding the criminal justice system: "outsource inmates to jails/prisons in mexico and brazil and other locations that know what real punishment first rehabilitation second means," and "Why not sell some of the schools about to be closed and house the less dangerous criminals so there is enough room for these repeat lifetime criminals?" and "they should have put him on one of the aleutian islands." Someone didn't like the sideline banter too much though: "you people are like the old lady who stares out the window all day commenting on people and making snide remarks, while talking on the phone to another old lady who's the same thing."
A story about a beating over beer money is pretty much guaranteed to be a hateful-comment-fest. But this one took a turn thanks to a remarkably wall-eyed alleged assailant — or, as one read put it, "eye of the tiger." The winning comment: "Look closely at him. He's keeping an eye out for the police."
As the murder count skyrocketed, so did the complaining: "Headline should read...."January murder rate no surprise". It is Philly, where the lazy, entitlement minded natives run free with illegal firearms," one commenter said. Others saw it differently: "Its the unseasonally nice weather. Makes you want to go outside and do something," a reader pointed out. And, "Did Nutter say Philadelphia crime would down 30% by his 2nd term or up?" Still, things ended on an optimistic note: "If their is one challenge the people of philly can meet, it's beating January murder rate, even if there is only 29 days in Feb."
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