by Don Haslett

Created on: April 09, 2009   Last Updated: April 10, 2009

I've always believed that a good rant can be a wonderfully freeing experience, though I find it's best when one observes a few important guidelines. Speaking for myself, night time is the right time for writing a good rant and my personal muse insists that there should be a modestly sized glass of good scotch or cognac near at hand. This inspiration is entirely a matter of personal choice; feel free to pick your own poison.

Keep track of your history because frequent rants will at some point cross that invisible line into raving, and unless you're running for office you should spread them out a bit. To ignore this is to risk being labeled a nutcase, (or a Senator). It can be a guilty pleasure to spew like an angry verbal volcano and to purge the indignation of whatever real or imagined slight has prompted such righteous ire in the first place. But, I cannot stress enough how vital it is that once the passion has been spent and the glass of scotch is empty, there is but one possible course of action remaining. This is the moment when a wise person will save the new masterpiece and file it away until tomorrow. The key to a really superb rant is to steadfastly ignore the immediate temptation that is the send' key.

Many of us have learned through sad experience that the cold, harsh light of morning will often bring an entirely different perspective to work that we considered genius the night before. In the good old days if I had typed out a ranting letter and then run to the nearest mailbox and sent it off, the damage would be done but at least it would have been limited to just myself and my intended target. But today if I compose a hastily written diatribe and submit it to a favorite web forum, there's a good chance that my words will forever mark my humiliation to anyone who performs a Google search on my name.

Still, we should acknowledge some of the individuals who have raised the rant to an art form. In the 1980s television evangelists like Swaggart, Baker and Falwell perfected the religion themed rant as a means to bring in revenue. The 90s brought us Dennis Miller ,whose vocabulary and sublime delivery resurrected the art craft of the spoken word. Today we have posers like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who hold onto power through tough-guy posturing in tediously long, rambling rants.

Staying closer to home, I participate in a writer's forum that offers an abundance of submissions on environmental issues and these topics display a robust mix of opinions. With such a wealth of articles it's disappointing to see that with some titles groups it is evident that the more one rants, the higher one's piece is rated. Articles about climate change and global warming usually find a few authors crossing over to fist pounding raving, yet these works are inexplicably rewarded with astonishingly high ratings.

As readers, should we be so accepting of the sensationalized rants that mimic the "Limbaugh/Coulter/Sharpton Effect," an exaggerated mocking style used in place of actual reason? Do we reward vitriol in place of eloquence because we've grown so accustomed to the negative focus of our mainstream media?

A good rant should attack issues not individuals and this important element is where the ravers and the provocateurs often go astray. It is disheartening that this can take place in an environment that otherwise excels at fostering a wide variety of viewpoints. As writers we appreciate the niceties and nuances of a well formed concept and being members of a microcosm of sorts, if we allow rants that have decayed into raving to influence our own thinking then how can we possibly expect work of real substance to stand a chance with a wider audience?

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