Yesterday in Philadelphia there was a senseless crime - 36 year old manager of a Starbucks was killed by a gang of students from Simon Gratz High School at 2:30 in the afternoon.  He was simply leaving work for the day and never made it home.  This kind of violence is so upsetting; children in the middle of the day taking a man’s life.  The school district, the teachers, the parents, and of course the students seem to be a lost cause - essentially allowing the human version of pack dogs out on the street to murder.

All of that said - I was reading the account of this on Philly.com and the comments of readers and the vileness of the responses are disgusting.  Racist rants threatening violence from the illiterates of our society.  It’s disgusting - and this is on a newspaper  website- not a blog.  I’m all for web 2.0 - but I wonder if all this free speech is worth it when in crosses with the delivery of news.  I know people like to talk and argue, but the discourse found at these websites is generally not intelligent.

I don’t know why I expect more.