Every time I peruse the comments section in some U.K. paper online -- most recently The Independent after the Romney gaffes, I'm struck by the near-universal maturity of tone and the easy dry humor. I know comment sections are just a sliver of the community, but stateside it sure is a big, nasty, crazy sliver. It's stomach churning. I don't see that with the U.K. papers.
For example, I just took in the comments after an article in the Orlando Sentinel (my hometown paper) about a ballot initiative to ensure paid sick leave for all workers (and how the mayor is opposed to it on "free enterprise" grounds). I'm actively supporting it and wondered what people thought. I needn't have bothered. The ratio of thoughtful commentary vs. "Lazy libtards chasin' all the job creators away with their socialist plot" was about 10:1 (in favor of crazy).
In contrast, commentators on the U.K. story, who I admit seemed saner in part because they were chuckling at Romney, nevertheless did so calmly, without epithets or references to any kind of culture war. Scrolling down (and down and down) I eventually came across a few conservative comments that approached U.S. levels of Internet nuttery (something about "Barry Obama" was one). But the ratio was completely reversed.
Maybe it's the U.K. papers I look at vs. the sad state of the seething masses here in Orlando. I do remember reading some strange racist comments in The Guardian once. Something about Italian immigrants being brutish or something. But by and large it just seems like people in the U.K. are ... smarter? Better educated? Or maybe it's just that they don't have a huge segment of the population that's bought into the truly nonsensical corporatist culture war nonsense we have here.
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