Comments of the Week: Packing a Punch

This week’s roundup of some of the most memorable comments to hit our collective editorial radar includes a snappy take on the legal and ideological battle between Peter Thiel and Gawker, a pointed comparison referring to the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal and a tribute to the late, great — actually, make that “The Greatest” — Muhammad Ali.

We’ll come out swinging with Ben Bache’s parting words for the heavyweight champ, posted under this story by columnist Juan Cole:

Ali gave me the courage to resist the draft. I got my draft notice and even went to my physical, but I didn’t go into the military or to Viet Nam. I didn’t have any lawyers like Ali. I survived and the experience gave me the courage to resist the evil ones to this day.

One Thomas Wanksworth picked up on an ironic undercurrent in this account of the ongoing fight between Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and Gawker Media:

Is it considered irony that a Facebook board member— whose goal it is to covertly compile and sell off millions of peoples’ personal information to the rest of corporate America— should take up a legal crusade against an entertainment/news site for overtly disseminating his own personal information?

Next, Rich Grisham described a hypothetical scenario to make a good point about what hasn’t happened in the wake of the Catholic Church’s wide-ranging sexual abuse scandal:

Look at what happen to an organization like ACORN with a completely fabricated crime, and even if the crime was legit, it does not rise to the level of institutional child abuse of the Church of Rome. The Catholic church has practiced, and still practices in the systematic cover-up and protection of pedophiles. This is no wild conspiracy theory; it is an international scandal that has left countless victims over centuries without peace or justice. Just imagine if an organization like the Green Party had proven to hide and protect institutionalized child abuse, politicians would be the grand inquisitors of justice calling for all Green Party members to be rounded up, and locked away. You talk about a terrorist organization – the Church of Rome has terrorized millions of men, women and children for centuries all the way to the present day, and the church is still not on the US terrorist list for terrorist organization. We had Wilson Red Scare and McCarthyism, Japanese internment camps, COINTELPRO, the Patriot Act etc…, but no national level politician or MSM report has called for a Congressional investigation into the institutionalized pedophilia of the Catholic church or the systematic covering-up and protecting of pedophiles. Hollywood, Washington DC and Religious organization seem to be able to function within a world where pedophiles are part of their everyday life. It makes you wonder if the entire system is loaded with depraved sex maniacs.

Here’s a write-up from Boston Harbor, posted in response to this Bill Boyarsky column, that covers a good swath of territory in a few concise lines:

Why on earth are Black Americans supporting the modern face of neoliberalism in Hillary Clinton? An ideology that has helped gut the manufacturing centers where Black Americans found their ticket into the middle class, this is why America is stagnating on so many levels, in my personal opinion.

Americans are fixated on things that truly don’t matter, like faithfulness to party, names, and what have you. Instead, we should be focusing on actual policy reforms, and paying attention to specific ideas that will help us change course as a country.

America needs to end the foreign empire building, cut the military and Pentagon budgets in half, and rebuild our domestic front, Hillary is a believer in building empire through the MIC, which only exacerbates poverty domestically for millions.

Finally, we have this comment from Diana Moss on how everything old is new again when it comes to Clinton’s power posse from Washington and Wall Street:

The corporations and Wall Street still enjoy the wonderful gifts from Bill’s time in the White House and are expecting more of the same from Hillary otherwise they wouldn’t be pouring more money into her campaign as well as the now famous Clinton Foundation. It will be interesting to see what kind of a plum position DWS receives from her devotion to making sure that Hillary is elected.

Once again, this was just a sampling of the comments we spotted in recent days, and we’ll be back next Sunday with more reactions and reflections. It’s going to be a big week.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson