It Did Recently Cross My Mind

that if I'd just said, hell with it and let all comments in unmoderated, that I might have had one of those all hell breaks loose blogs that I could have monetized early and made some money out of it.  I regularly outraged people at other blogs I wrote for and commented on and expect I could have had huge numbers of clicks with just the regular stuff I post.   I often got hundreds of hateful comments at Echidnes, it was when I didn't mind brawling a lot on the comment threads.  At Chris Mooney's blog I had a brawl that almost went to a thousand comments.  That was when I said I thought PZ had faked his "Great Desecration."  When someone told me what he'd claimed about it it was so transparently implausible that I said I thought he'd faked the entire thing and never had a consecrated communion host, that he'd either made one of Wonder Bread or he'd cut one out of paper.  That got their knickers in a twist. 

But I had enough of that kind of crap at Duncan's blog and didn't think it was responsible for me to host the kinds of slander and libel and lies and false common received wisdom that is damaging to morals and American politics.  Who knows, maybe I'd have let the liars and slanderers and others make the comments into a club that had nothing to do with me, like you know who, and made a little ready cash out of it.

But I wouldn't have had a sponsored link to Amazon.  Even if I were depraved I'd have drawn the line at that.  

I might have had a fund raising week.   Though when I thought of that, once, I remembered what Quentin Crisp said  when he was brought up on charges of solicitation,  I don't ask strange men for money because I don't believe they'd give it to me. 

Maybe I should risk it and see what happens.  I could use a couple of dollars.