When I was a little kid, the bigger kids in my Levittown, New York neighborhood took me to a Saturday matinee to see “The Attack of the Crab Monsters.”   

Made for about twelve dollars, this Roger Corman chiller featured radioactive crabs that role reversed - they ate people on a remote island.   

Judging by their paper-like on screen appearance, these crabs were definitely soft shell and had an interesting quirk: once a crab consumed someone, the crab could imitate the digested person’s voice.  So, in the middle of the night the crab would bellow: “Betty, this is Laura, please run out into the dark by yourself and save me. I fell into a cave!  Betty, pleasseeee!”    

Of course, Betty would skip right out into the night without telling anyone, and another dinner was served.    

Those crab monsters scared me so much that for three weeks when my mother called me for supper I replied: “do you think I’m stupid?”

These days, the internet is far more frightening than anything Hollywood ever put out, with the possible exception of Gary Busey.    

First of all, there are millions of cyberspace vehicles all over the world which are completely unsupervised.  They distribute anything and, if it’s outrageous enough, it can go “viral.”      

That sounds like a disease and it certainly can be.  Human beings are routinely smeared on the net by other human beings seeking to do them grave harm.    

And if you’re famous or a political candidate, forget it.  America’s antiquated libel laws protect sociopaths who delight in defamation.  There is absolutely no protection for people in the public eye.    

So what happens is - everyone is slimed.  If you “google” a famous person, you will likely see ghastly things written about them.  No one is safe.    

Back in the day, public slander and libel actually had to go through checkpoints to find its way into the public discourse.  If great men like Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy were alive today, they never could have governed.  Dwight Eisenhower would have been sacked as Supreme Allied Commander during World War II.  Martin Luther King, Jr. could not have led his people.    

Only after these men died did history reveal their human weaknesses.   

Today, all of them would have been shredded on the net.    

So think about that the next time some website or press vehicle quotes an anonymous source in order to destroy a person of influence.  We live in a country where personal attacks are vicious and unceasing.  We live in a time where accusations instantly turn into facts.   

We live in a culture that seemingly has little problem with that.    

It’s enough to make the crab monsters look like Shirley Temple.     

Google her.