A joke that misfired

So the other day, I posted a little link to a piece the fine Fr. Bob Carr had written about his Holy Rule for Blogging. He was basically trying to encourage civility and common sense among bloggers.

My sense of humor is perverse. So when I run across obvious nice people writing obviously good and decent pleas for loving and thoughtful discourse, it cracks me up to juxtapose those pleas with the worst sort of brainless screaming you find in cyberspace. The stupidest form of commentary on the web is to take some innocuous or helpful point made by another writer and scream “THIS IS LIKE HITLER!” It immediately establishes that the person making the Hitler comparison is a fool who has nothing worthwhile to say. I was making fun of that, since Fr. Carr’s article was all about how *not* to be a fool on the internet. I was just being ironic and silly. However, several people have written me now, wondering if I was serious and what was so terrible about Fr. Carr’s piece. So it appears my joke was not all that funny if nobody is getting it and people think I was insulting Fr. Carr. My apologies.

Keep up the good work, Fr. Carr!