Hello everybody! I’m doing a special offer I have done a version of once before, around Christmas. I’m doing it a little more publicly this time.
Here it is:
if you do not currently pay for this newsletter
and you donate at least fifty dollars to Doctors Without Borders
and you send me proof of this at barbara dot mcclay at gmail dot com
I will comp you for a year’s subscription to Notebook
Why?
Truthfully, on Monday night I was looking at some online bullshit and clicked over to a profile for any further developments and the person whose bullshit I was looking at had retweeted a picture of a dead child in Gaza whose legs were partially blown off. I would like to say I thought this was some sort of calculated move on this person’s part but unfortunately I think it’s just that the great online hose is constantly pouring forth some horrible mixture of stupid ideas, photographs of atrocities, and kittens.
I mostly avoid these sorts of pictures, not exactly out of squeamishness, but partly because I don’t really need to see them, a little bit out of feeling like I shouldn’t go gawking at the spectacle of the dead, and then because a lot of pictures that circulate during war are from other conflicts or are otherwise things I don’t feel responsible circulating. But if I can get irritated enough by some person online saying something stupid, I can do something else. And this is the something else I can do.