Beaten Blogger in Baghdad

I finally got around to read blogger Khalid Jarrars' (Tell Me a Secret) account of his recent time in detention with the Iraqi security. Touching, well worth reading. Glad he is back.

152 comments on his post. I expected gratulations but found the cheap attempts of driving home political points that are so off the target we should scream. Is education not on these peoples agenda? Is it just the opportunity to speak that is important? Why don't they seek councelling instead? Actually, Walter Kirn gave the answer last Wednesday:

Psychoanalysis is outdated. If you really want to learn about yourself, take over a popular blog for a few days, scribble away about the odd ideas that no conventional publication would ever let you air, and wait about twenty minutes for the flood of e-mailed corrections, ass-kickings, character judgments, and other miscellaneous reactions that you've so roundly earned in certain cases and in other cases don't deserve.

Yesterday, he added:

...an overdose of raw emotion tends to wear on the nerves after a point and invite a defensive mental reaction. ... Life imitates art, and if the reigning popular art form now is reality TV, then we may be looking forward to a period when the news will be dominated by weeping fits, shouting contests, nervous breakdowns, and other raw displays of feeling, some of them premeditated and staged. ... All hysteria all the time -- is that's what's coming? Looks that way.