The comments on the Vandergriff stories (another one - complete with Jamie Satterfield snark - ran today) are really vicious. Just proof that many east Tennesseans have no taste. Or class.

Best wishes to the newly-weds!

I'm so sick of the silly comments that cheapen most stories and I've been sick for a long, long time of the snarky comments Satterfield throws in to even stories about murder. Crime stories like Herb Moncier's McDonald's incindent may call for it, or even her goofy bike story, but don't open up stories like abot the girl in Sevierville about how everybody thought she was a slut. That's so cheap and trashy.....

I tried to warn you all these sorts of things would happen when you taught those folks to read, but no one listened.

Seriously, Bean's right. Inviting comment on a story like that when you know precisely what your online reader demographic looks like is nothing less than an invitation to slurs and worse. The bar continues to lower in the quest for click-throughs.

Larry Van Guilder

No, the parents don't deserve it, and neither does Tim. But he is a public figure, his wedding is news, this is Knoxville, the KNS is its daily, and its lay commentators are infantile losers. So there you go. If you open comment to news stories, you invite comment to them all, I would think. It's the hazard of being in a leadership position in an adolescent city.

There are a couple of no-win scenarios here, unfortunately.

First off, I want to agree with Betty. The family doesn't deserve this and I hope they never see it. Tim's parents are great folks. His dad is the only guy I know who can still use the phrase "Damn hippies."

When people can comment without saying who they are it fosters irresponisibility by some. It's the bad we have to take with the good that comes from these forums.

Secondly, if the News Sentinel doesn't allow comments on some stories they will get trashed for not allowing them. And if they do allow them, they can get trashed for allowing them. In that kind of no-win scenario I suspect journalists will come down on the side of allowing comments more often.

Congratulations to Tim and Alison. And to Charlie and Joyce who waited a good many years to see their little boy take the plunge.

Comments on news articles are a passing phase, a technological bell-and-whistle that gets used because they can, not because they should. The only reason to have the comments is to put eyes on ads. Newspaper publishers will soon enough realize that most of the comments come from the same small number of usual suspects, and that the cost of staff to monitor the comments is greater than the ad revenue generated. Also, disclaimers notwithstanding, the first time a publisher has to pay attorneys to defend against a comments-related libel suit, they'll shut that useless function right down.