"You can't continue to stick your head into the sand and refuse to believe that this isn't a part of how men really think and feel and fuck and want and love and hate and live." Damn, is Susannah Breslin channeling the Ghost of Feminism Past, or what? These internet feminists have been reading too much Andrea Dworkin.

Subtext? What subtext? Clinton's equation of "hard working Americans" with "white Americans" is not the "ugly subtext." It is the text. We're so far removed from believing that any language ever means what it says, that we call even the surface meaning of a statement the "subtext." Compared with this kind of pseudo-academic analysis, fundamentalism looks pretty damned attractive.

Call it what you will, the re-naming of the thing changes its essence no more than calling my dog a cat, turns my dog into cat.

His deep-seated belief that they're hopelessly inferior to himself, is why Obama isn't liked by "those hillbillies."

When the culture, especially the elite intellectual culture, offers nothing beyond materialism and thinks itself brilliant for unwittingly repeating the old, anti-essentialism of Phyrronism, why are we surprised that the highest goal of our young girls is the body? Why are we surprised that they see little beyond the finite gratification and temporary glorification of the here-and-now? Ask yourself this: What else, do you believe, is there to aspire to? What endures? When the whole of society is on the verge of giving up spiritual and philosophical pursuits and considers such considerations mere ideology of the most oppressive sort, it's difficult to see why the youth should believe that one material goal is any less superficial than another. Don't be surprised when the emptiness of absolute skepticism comes home to roost.

Thank you, Dr. Parikh. I never understood till now why I feel an uncontrollable urge to eat five bags of Doritos every time I even so much as think of Yoda. Strong the Jedi mind trick is with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. A slave of Frito-Lay am I.

In cultural studies, whether or not a work by a member of a previously silenced group is "good" or not is the wrong question: "Good" is understood to be a suspect term based on the self-interested values of those in power.

Laura Miller describes not only the impotence of modern criticism here, but also the debasement of the whole culture which, especially in its highest intellectual circles, rejects value judgments of any sort. After all, what is "good"? What is "bad"? And who decides?

The problem with this rejection of value judgments is that to decide that the question of "what is good" is "the wrong question", we need the very same question of good and bad to have been decided in the first place, in order to know that its rejection is preferable. This brings the endless contradictions of poststructuralism. For in pronouncing "I reject value judgments as political," the critic has already made a value judgment that by the very logic of the pronouncement must be rejected, ad infinitum: "I reject judgment as political." "I reject the judgment that judgment is political." "I reject the judgment that rejects the judgment that judgment is political," and so on. The reason is that if judgment is merely political, or if the terms of judgment always contain each other to the point that no judgment is feasible, as Derrida might say, then the judgment that a term of judgment contains it opposite is itself suspect and can't be made without its also being rejected as containing its opposite, in an infinite series of rejections.

In their time, Lucretius and Rosmini debunked these concepts in this same manner exactly. What's unique today isn't that the old ideas have returned, but that their incoherence is lauded as brilliance instead of recognized as absurd.

Tracy's implication that if only masturbation were talked about more in middle schools, then the school district's teen pregnancy rate would go down, is one of those "holier than thou" witticisms that a certain clique of commentators pull out from time to time. My God, why can't these dumb parents see that talking about masturbation to middle-schoolers puts a curb on teen pregnancy? Great connection there. I'm sure you're right. While we're at it, let's bring in the NRA to tell the civics classes that using firearms prevents gunshot deaths.

This is really cool: Salon.com has run Farhad Manjoo's neat little article on Microsoft's "cash back" search engine, just at the same time the Salon.com web site is flooded with Microsoft's Live Search Cash Back ads. As Brian Williams might say, "In the interest of full disclosure . . ."

I'm gratified to know that Salon.com, despite affecting the appearance as a liberal, quasi-socialist rag, loves its aggressive corporate sponsors as much as the next guy. Keep up the good work, friends.

It's fascinating that John Hagee has (1) founded a group called Christians United for Israel, whose head is Jewish; (2) marched on Washington in support of Israel; (3) claimed that the land of Israel belongs by right to the Jews.

I suppose this is what McCain is rejecting when he rejects Hagee's views on the Jews.

Let's have gender-blind sports teams. No more silly divisions between men's and women's sport. At any given organized level (club, high school, college, pro), the best players make the team regardless of sex. The others go play in some unofficial venue. These petty distinctions of sex in organized sport are just artificial cultural constructs anyway.

"Hugely popular sports like rowing." There's a gem. Excuse me while a go visit Espn.com's page on women's rowing.

"God allowed it to happen." Whew, that's a wacko statement from Hagee, especially considering that Christians, Jews, and just about everyone who believes in God (I know, I know, only totally ignorant boors believe in God anymore and you geniuses all know better, but bear with me)--all of them believe that everything that happens, happens because God allows it. But that Hagee, he's really nuts I guess.