What was up with all the "0 comments" this week? I'll not kvetch too much, because I'll take a slow week for comments over a shitstorm freakout in the comments sections any day, truth be told. Oy. Don't get me wrong, though, the comments we did have were all appreciated, most were wonderful, and a few were even quite funny.
My personal feeling, well one of them anyway, about humor is that it is a bit of an information lubricant, if you will, making oft complex issues digestible, or at the very least, as was the case here, illustrating an alternative point-of-view, especially in the middle of a potentially frustrating discussion, respectfully and in a non-threatening manner. Bonus if the chuckle isn't had at anyone's expense, either. When things aren't threatening, people tend to listen and hear opposing viewpoints better, and so on and so forth. Not to say that it's wrong to be pissed off and chew someone's as, if that's your bag, but I tend to appreciate the lost art of discussion quite a bit. I also tend to enjoy a nice dose of sarcasm or snark here and there, too.
That said, without further ado, fresh from a discussion this week about Agunot, getting a get, nasty divorces and separation of religion and civil matters, I bring you the comment of the week, a line from a longer comment by David Strauss, that used his simple-yet-impossible-goal imagery to make this point about a man denying his wife a get and thus preventing her from remarrying:
"What he did is cruel, but it's the civil equivalent of me removing all the black tiles from a hallway and someone complaining that they couldn't get to the restroom because they can only walk on black tiles."
But, what really sealed it all up for me this week, in terms of what I'd possibly pick to write about tonight (let me pause here and assure you I got permission to reference this email by its sender), came right after, when a former coworker I'd lost touch with years ago emailed me privately and quite out-of-the-blue to ask quite earnestly if I had "any blessed clout" here at Jewcy to remove the comment out of respect for people with color-preferential obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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