On a pretty good level I operate by the rule of never writing something I wouldn’t be willing to say in public. Be it here or in a comment on another’s blog, I try always to moderate my mental excretions.

So when in response to this LA Metblogs post yesterday by Jason Burns about the tragedy of Wanda Dunn, a commenter who goes by the telling moniker of “bmayhem”  let loose with a truly heinous fusillade of insults and opinions against the Pasadena homeowner facing foreclosure and eviction who allegedly set her house on fire and then killed herself, it disturbed me. Deeply.  Among other things this “bmayhem” called her an “asshole” and “childish,” all under the righteously indignant belief that it was obviously within her power to make the right decisions instead of the wrong ones.

Such assumptions are easy ones to make and vomit into the ether — especially from the far-removed corners that surround such omniscient keyboard pounders.

To say I was appalled at such abject rancor and venom would be terrifically understated. Enraged would better define how I feel. But not so blinded that I feel this “bmayhem” isn’t certainly entitled to an opinion. Of course he or she is. Despite it going so harshly against the way I roll both morally and philosophically, I understand not everyone is like me and I respect anyone’s right to freely express themselves. It may always be the better choice to just shut up in my world, but in another’s not so much. At the same time I can hope it’s not too much to request that they would at least think about whether they’d be able to say something so soulless sitting near someone like me who might take offense.

Because if you’re as fundamentally crass in public as “bmayhem” is isolated in the glow of a computer monitor; if you abnormally lack common decency enough to spout off something in public so vile then you’d be unfortunately obligated to either kick my ass or have it arrested and prosecuted for assault because I’d be unable to prevent myself from shoving yours out of your chair or from flinging the nearest drink at your face to douse the noxiously tactless and obtusely flammable gases emanating from it.