If broadcast and cable media both encourage and reflect cultural divisiveness, online communities seem to fuel it even further.

“The Internet has allowed everyone to hold a can of red paint and spray the wall,” says Erik Hanberg ’02. “They can say whatever mean thing they want to say and sit back and watch the fallout. That’s one of the plagues of the Internet.”

I’m quoted in the Carleton Voice, the Carleton alumni magazine, on civil discourse. It paints me as being a little bit more down on the state of civil discourse than I generally am, but still, kind of cool. They actually quote me fairly extensively.