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Norm and the Hand of God

So I have this "fan" of sorts over at the Detroit News comment section. Norm Kinzel of Cocoa Beach, wouldn't know a punctuation mark if it bit him and he's never found the shift key but he reads me regularly and I've become rather fond of him. I worry he's going to stroke out on me some day though. I tend to upset him.

My hurricane post below just about sent him over the edge this morning. By the time I turned on the computer he had already left three sputtering comments. You may have to scroll if you come in late. They don't permalink so I'll paste in one.

i can t let this drop i don t like liberals politically i believe they are bad for the country but i don t hate them as people you hate people you have no business writing a political piece because all you do is hate no rational person would agree with you on the florida huricane people who agree with you politically need to tell you stop the hate people died down here for christ sake grow up

He's always saying stuff like that to me but to tell you the truth, I don't think he really means it. Even though he would never admit it, in his heart he knows I'm a good person. I usually ignore it but I have to admit when I got up this morning, the images of the devastation were so disturbing that I was concerned my remarks would be misconstrued as merely facile by more than just Norm. It's easy to forget when you're blogging that an offhand remark can travel a long way on the internet.

In the end it forced me to justify my thinking and remind myself that I had no more right to glibly speak to God's intention than Bush does. I have to admit when I posted last night, I went to bed thinking the storm would much less severe.

If you're still with me at this point, you can read the subsequent post at DetNews here.

UPDATE: Having heard from my fellow blogger Steve Couch on the matter and also taking into account the final effects of the storm which although gratefully included less fatalities but caused such tremendous property damage, I decided to apologize after all for being so, however unintentionally, facile. If you're interested, you can read it here.