The Internet has been praised for increasing the level of interaction between the producers of news and its consumers. Yet Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times questions just how valuable the online “Comments” section of articles really is. Using Slate/Washington Post columnist Ann Applebaum as an example, Heffernan notes that this journalist, who has been called one of the “world’s most sophisticated thinkers,” reguarly receives anti-Semitist, angry, superficial, and just plain irrelevant comments for her pieces.