It’s a pity indeed. I just put up a piece elsewhere on Medium (below, if anyone’s interested) about my finally coming to grips with the social media. Now I see this and it makes me believe I should just pull the plug on the whole thing. The sexist disbelief that any attractive young woman might have something profound to say is as old as history. I’ve been working on a story about Maria Theresa of Austria — half the continent of Europe went to war against her in the seventeenth century when she tried to assume the throne. Just because she was a petite 23-year-old woman. The inability of the social media to produce intelligent discourse is a new problem, and it’s wrecking havoc on our society’s chances of having anything like a rational political discussion in the race for prez. So much of it is just noise pollution.