What the hell were we thinking?

I do not know who Damian Penny is, but (as linked by Instapundit) I notice that he is wishing that we here at Salon go bankrupt, because he is very upset that we chose to publish our readers’ responses to Damien Cave’s piece on “Forbidden Thoughts on 9/11,” and that we published it on the anniversary of 9/11. “What… the… Hell… were… they… thinking?!?” asks Mr. Penny.

We were thinking precisely this: That an orthodoxy has coalesced around 9/11, and that one good role of journalism is to puncture orthodoxies. That the range of human response to 9/11 was a lot wider than that reflected in the media orgy of 9/11 retrospectives. And that it’s probably a lot healthier to air such responses than to pretend that they don’t exist.

We published a lot of stories on the anniversary of 9/11 (there’s a list of about two dozen here). This was just one of them. Irreverent? Sure. You don’t call them “forbidden thoughts” for nothing. We’ve also published our share of serious remembrances, of sensitive looks back, and of articles that fully respect the enormity of the crimes committed on that day. That we chose not to drape our entire issue of 9/11 in a sanctimonious, monotone blanket of enforced “respect” seems to have riled some people and cheered others. I guess we’re used to that. In the piece I linked to below, Simon Schama talked about the “pious hush” the administration is using to “bestow on its adventurism the odour of sanctity.” Breaking that hush seems to me to be valuable, even patriotic.

Sorry you disagree, Mr. Penny. That’s what democracy is all about. We’re free to publish stuff you don’t like and you’re entirely free not to like it — and as an editor I’m certainly interested in why you don’t like it.

But before you wish that Salon goes bankrupt, may I ask how you pay your bills, and how you’d feel if someone wished the same on the source of your livelihood? When did political disagreement turn into a license to wish that your opponents lose their jobs, or worse (cf. Ann Coulter’s comment, “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building”)? Good night.