The New York Times has a gig on comments. I responded.

I am a communist. I get kicked off comments a lot. Then, I’m back, and then I’m off. The way the wind is blowing can imbue comments with immediacy. I am a hypocrite. Comments are the only choir I am allowed to sing in. I have been kicked out of book publishing. I strangulated the rules. I am a bad person. I don’t understand the rules. I am uncivil. There is a generic We Have To Make Things Nice Kinda Tone, and I am told it gives the reader hope. When did hope become my responsibility. I try to facilitate reports on poverty sometimes in anecdotal ways. But it’s not a beat much covered. NYT will reach into the academic grab bag for any poverty beat. The NYT is put off by anyone who even sounds radical. We are not Candyman, Candyman. We are an exclusive Special Education Drab Wing of NPR. There is an office with a chair in it somewhere. I want two things out of gatekeepers. 1.) That they be cognizant of the fact that What Is Humor is not necessarily civilized. 2.) Humor and satire are protected speech because without them, we would fail to see that an idea can be approached in a variety of ways, even ideas like evil communism, reducing rhetoric into a crushing black hole of Nothing Is Important as We All Sound Alike. Marx did nail it. The context of civility has to do with any gatekeepers’ ideas of what does civility even mean. It means power. I write for myself. Praying at the Gates of Beautiful on your knees gives Comments and Communism Pause.