The mean-spirited right-wing rants in which The Other Charlotte and I specialize here on the InkWell are attracting the attention of the liberal blogs, including Amptoons, which I actually kind of like. Et tu, Amptoons! Amptoons complains that our glee over the dismal ratings for Tony Kushner’s way overhyped HBO special “Angels in America” was misplaced. (See “Angel Dust,” Dec. 17, “Fallen Angels, Part 2,” Dec. 22, and “The Worst Little Boy in the World,” Jan. 5, all in our Archives.) Amptoons says that if we had compared the ratings for Kushner’s AIDS play only to those for other made-for-cable movies, in contrast to everything else that was on TV last December, we would have discovered that “Angels” was actually a huge hit, not the flop we called it. Gee.


And The Poor Man takes me to task in particular for arguing that Caroline Payne, the spendthrift off-and-on welfare mom whom David Shipler billed as an example of our neglected working poor in the NYT magazine a few weeks ago, bears at least some responsibility for her numerous woes, which aren’t all society’s fault. (See “Caroline’s Whine” and “Caroline’s Whine–the Riposte,” Jan. 19, “Caroline’s Whine–Riposte to the Riposte, Jan. 20, and “Mailbag–Granite-Top Heart, ” Jan. 26, all also in Archives.)


Both blasts at me and The Other Charlotte attracted lots of comments from other outraged liberals in the sites’ discussion threads. Frankly, we loved them! But we were troubled by this comment on Amptoons from one Gielbondhu:


“Am I the only person who hates it when attack blogs don’t have comments?”


No, unfortunately, we don’t have comment threads here on InkWell. The reason is that such threads require constant monitoring for weirdos. We don’t want pervs, racists, Holocaust-deniers, or people trying to use our site to sell their stuff. And since both The Other Charlotte and I work–I teach Latin and The Other Charlotte is writing two books–we can’t oversee InkWell all day long. (Lots of weblogs, including Instapundit, Kausfiles, and AndrewSullivan.com., don’t contain comments threads, undoubtedly for this very reason.)


But we do welcome e-mail, and we post all the hate that’s fit to print in our Mailbag. So, liberal readers–go to it! Let us know how you really feel about us!


Meanwhile, I’ll respond to one Poor Man comment, from Kelly:


“I bet Charlotte is hot. Don’t you think Charlotte must be hot, and a hellcat to boot? And Charlotte is such a hot name.”


Kelly, you don’t know the half of it.