I have an opinion. I give you that opinion every week. I do not expect you to agree with me. If you don’t agree with me I expect that you would show me the courtesy of disagreeing with me diplomatically without attacking me or whomever I am writing about. I am on a rant this week.

I also put my name to this column so that you know I am the one choosing my words. I read many newspapers. I have been reading the comments that are now part of online newspapers. It astounds me that because people do not have to own their comments with their name they feel free to be cruel in disagreeing with whatever is written.

Nick Coleman, columnist for the Star Tribune recently wrote a column about the cruelty of online comments. He is tired of the cruel comments, too, especially when they involve the innocent people he writes about. His Nov. 2 column addressed the issue of online comments. I applaud rule one in his column. Rule one states: Keep the insults to me, OK? Innocent citizens who appear in my column sometimes get the same mob beating I absorb but that is hard to take for an average person whose only crime was to speak to me. A widow whose story I told was insulted harshly and told to “get over” her grief and move on. Those are fighting words, in any county.

Thank you Mr. Coleman. I do not think online comments have made our reading a better experience. I think online comments fuel negativity and give people a forum for being nasty. These people would not have the courage to sign their names if they had to own their comments. Now I am being negative about the people who feel they need to belittle and bring other people down to their level. However, you know my name. You don’t have to like me and you do not even have to read this column if you feel I am talking about you.

Our economy right now is terrible. The elections and their negative campaigning added to our overall negative feelings about what is happening in our world these days. I have a theory and it is probably wrong, but it is my theory. The candidates’ nasty campaigning was fueled by insecurity that they might not win. Insecure people lash out at others. I felt the candidates’ motto was “Win at all costs.” We hated the negative campaigning and the bashing. We complained about it a great deal. However, if character bashing were not working for the candidates, they would have stopped it. What does that say about our character if we are swayed to make a decision based on these negative campaign tactics?

It is up to us to stop it. We need to take ownership for many of the problems in our economy. We need to take a stand on negative campaigning. We need to take a stand and take ownership for what we write in the comment section. Irrational negative comments serve no purpose for solving problems they just fuel negativity. If we turned the energy it takes to bash people into energy to solve our problems we would accomplish great things.

The irrational, bashing comments that are now being printed in newspapers are no different then the negative campaigning. Why do we feel the need to belittle with our comments when we state our opinion? Is it perhaps that we are jealous that someone makes more money than us? Is it perhaps that we are jealous because someone else lives in a nicer home? Is it perhaps that we feel invisible and that no one is listening to our opinion so we have to strike out in anonymity in a cruel fashion? People’s negative comments say more about them as a person than the content of their comments.

We can always blame our situation on someone else. We can blame our financial situation on the economy. We can always find someone else to blame or put down. That is easy. I will admit I have participated in the blame game, too. I have to tell you it did not make me feel better; it made me feel worse.

At some point we need to take a look inside ourselves if we are making those negative, cruel comments. At some point we have to look inside ourselves if we take joy in hurting others. At some point we have to look inside ourselves and see what is making us so unhappy, insecure and lonely that we would need an anonymous forum so we could hurt other people.

I imagine I am now going to be the brunt of those negative comments. I put my name to this column. So I want to tell you that the next time you get joy out of making hurtful comments in a newspaper on a story, I want you to think about this. I want you to imagine looking into the eyes of the person and persons you are making the comments about. Look into their eyes and see the hurt and sadness you have inflicted. I then want you to imagine they are making those comments to you. Would that make a difference to what you are saying? If not and cruelty is the way you treat people, then look inside yourself and ask why?

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send e-mail to her at

thecolumn@bevcomm.net.