This one’s kind of sad, actually.

Over the weekend I was trolling “the Internets” to see what was being said about the Blossom Hill murders. Came across this site, Crimeblogs.us, which - as with most such sites - contained links, lots and lots of speculation, not much else.

Except for one thing. The proprietor of the site - and lots of the posters - noticed the extreme ugliness that accompanied the one thread in particular about this crime on LancasterOnline.com:

The link takes you to LancasterOnline’s message board, and a discussion of this case that I’d imagine anyone close to the Haineses would find offensive. The discussion quickly devolved to an argument between gun lovers and gun haters, with contributions from people who just plain hate the local government, to boot. Amazing, and not in a good way.

Now, OK, I spend a considerable amount of time on the Internets, post to a couple boards (though not LOL) and, you know, ugliness happens. People get a little wrapped up in the issue at hand, say things they’d never say in person, you know how it goes. Nothing to get all worked up about, because it’s not like the LOL board is any worse than any other board.

Or is it?

I bring that up because David Porter of Tornado Alley pointed out another discussion taking place on LOL, this one regarding some pics he posted of McCaskey’s Prom. The girls and guys are all dolled up in the latest way, and some of the girls are wearing dresses that, yep, are a little revealing. I doubt this is something that’s only begun to happen in 2007, I doubt this is only something happening at McCaskey.

But the LOL thread quickly degenerated into a discussion of how these girls look like “hookers.”

Excuse me?

Look, I wouldn’t let my daughter wear some of these dresses to a prom or anywhere else, though God knows what kids will be wearing by the time she makes it to that age. But really - isn’t it completely misogynist to say that dresses like these automatically mean that the person wearing one surely does not possess the qualifications to hold down any sort of professional job?

These are kids. Kids who - as was pointed out in the thread - are about to graduate from high school. Kids who have achieved something, ought to be proud of it, and you know, if they don’t dress the way you or I would dress our own children, how do you make a value judgment solely on the basis of that?

Amazing. And not in a good way.

It’s one thing for me to notice all of this, because sure, I work for the establishment and the Internets represent the mammals running beneath the feet of the MSM dinosaur, blah blah blah. Yeah. It’s another thing when people from outside this community, on the Web, notice that discussion on LancasterOnline can be particularly vicious, even as these things go.

We, society in general, like to notice a general coarsening of the cultural climate in this country, and some would undoubtedly point to these dresses as part of that. There’s a discussion to be had there. But when, on the basis of a few photos of a relative handful of girls you pronounce McCaskey itself a “joke” - well, isn’t that evidence of the coarsening as well?