Lent Writing

Maybe it's cheating, but most of my Lenten writing has been focused on writing responses to op-eds. It's been great to have increased reading as an added bonus to the fast. It's also been fascinating to read opinion pieces and the comments people write in response to them.

By fascinating, I partially mean scary as hell. There are some wackjobs out there. A number of comments are from seemingly educated people who are wildly, and seemingly intentionally, hateful and misguided. It portends poorly for our world if these people exist en masse. Still, I guess it's better to know than to be lulled into a false sense of societal sanity. Like racism, crazy is a dish best served overtly.

The other thing that is fascinating is that op-ed are essentially just blogs. Some of them have as much basis in fact or reality as Enquirer stories. And, before you say "duh," I already know that's why they are called opinion pieces. I assumed, though, that op-ed writers had some level of credibility and gravitas beyond the garden variety tweeter. Guess the old adage about assuming comes true yet again.