I hate writing the blog du jour. Everyone and his mother is writing a blog this week about bad behavior, driven mostly by the uber-journalism around Kanye’s interruption, Serena’s threat, and Joe’s outburst.  It’s just too easy—a bit of social commentary that practically writes itself.

I won’t repeat the particulars; there are too many editorials about it already, and you don’t have the time. But I am heartbroken today, not merely because I don’t like my children seeing tantrums by adults, but because I made the huge mistake of reading the bizarre racial ideology of a hundred lunatic Americans hiding out on comment threads related to those very stories.

If our nation is a giant rock quarry, it seems I’ve been hanging out around the visible crust for most of my life. I don’t dig conspiracy theories and I’ve never blasted a hole into the darker layers of racism or hate. It’s not my domain. But this afternoon, while keeping abreast of my nation’s latest conversations, I discovered an entire strata I hoped didn’t really exist. I am not as naïve as I once was, nor do I see the world through an optimist’s lens, yet what I discovered in the comment threads of only three news articles—in phrases I cannot repeat and language I could not imagine—has rattled me today.