And good luck on the fiction…! You’re a braver man than I, Gunga Din.

(And now I feel even worse about those recent couple of days when I couldn’t get it together to post…).

For what it’s worth (not much), my opinion aligns with Emily’s in her comment above. Although Americans still like to call themselves conservative, when you look at public opinion polls on the issues, Americans are quite solidly left-of-center. I think so many of us still call ourselves conservative because when we were growing up that was the word we used for the people who presented themselves as clam, rational, reasonable and pragmatic (as I detailed in a follow up post) — and it still carries that meaning for many, despite the evidence of my lengthy post.

The more that we point out just how radical, reckless and unreasonable (really, wild-eyed) today’s Right has become, the more the word conservative will lose that connotation.

And when they break a piece, as they did today, on the percentage of Americans who believe the President is Muslim, as well as the even greater number who ‘aren’t sure,’ they are instigating dialogue intended to excite rather than educate.

The reports may be well-written and researched, A.P. has the most rigorous fact-checking system in the media, but they’ve learned how the internet works.

It’s all about the headline and the first paragraph.

Do you know what I’ve found effective in slowing them down in my increasingly more common visits to that bastion of hate, intolerance and fear known as the Yahoo Comment Board?

Appeal to their manhood.

There’s a word I’ve found that when positioned properly acts like a dagger in deflating their misguided rage.

Coward.

I am just incensed that it is considered more scandalous to be a garden-variety crooked politician (aka Rangal) than it is to suggest RIPPING APART THE MOTHERFUCKING CONSTITUTION!!1!

For the love of Moses in the damn bullrushes, every single one of those lawmakers will come and go, but the Constitution IS this country. It really is! We are not America without it! What the hell are they trying to protect here?!

Sigh. They neither listen to me, nor take my calls.

That said, my agreement with you stops here: “It built a benevolent clique of commenters, encouraged inside jokes, and, on the whole, lowered the level of discourse. This is fine, and certainly TNC does many posts that aren’t exactly high-brow. However, I got the feeling that often the spirit of the Open Thread would take over the blog.”
I question both the assertion that there’s been a decline in the quality of the commenting, and the hypothesis that the Open Threads are to blame. The only significant difference I see in the TNC threads of the past few months and the TNC threads from early in 2009 (when I first started reading) is an increase in the number of trolls. I think TNC’s rise in popularity and influence within the blogosphere and the deliberate race-baiting of the right wing have a lot more to do with that phenomenon than any amount of Open Threads ever have.

I suppose I do see your point about the increase in the number of inside jokes: haircuttery, conversate, and the like. But I don’t think those have lowered the quality of the comments or the extent to which commenters push back on one another.