In defense of these young men, I have found that their saving grace is that on the whole their attitudes are quite malliable. An adult who can gain them trust by showing them respect and not talking down to them, can make them realise that these sexist, racist and homophobic attitudes are wrong and make them into the kind of person they do not want to be. It's just important to remember, despite the vile things they say and do, they are not beyond redemption.

Yes, language does reflect the assumptions of a culture, but as for as it controlling your thoughts, it has only a weak effect. Lots of words to descibe stupidity, come from words for the mentally disabled: retard, idiot, moron, pinhead even the word "special". We call people who ignore us deaf, people who don't notice something blind, useless things lame, stupid people dumb and the list goes on. The issue is how we treat these minorities, not whether the word is used. And even after we have corrected the injustice, the word may persist. I don't suppose left-handed people feel opressed, yet the word sinister means left hand, nor are Welsh people offende the we use the term "welch" for backing out of a promise.

Isn't one of McCain's big strengths that he is chummy with the Press? Isn't this going to get the Press really annoyed?

I want to point out two other cases where the Bush administration was thwarted. The went after Public Television and Amtrak and could not take away their support. Seems the people, even conservatives, watch PBS and need access to passenger trains.

America has certianly come a long way if Jews aren't concerned about their own civil rights and religious freedom, and Israel is the only Jewish issue. Good job America!

Gardening is for those who enjoy gardening, not for those who need food. First of all, vegetables are not where your food dollars are going. Now if you could raise and slaughter your own meat, that might be profitable. As for me, all I grow is basil (indoors) and tomatoes just because they taste so much better than store bought, but in the long run, they don't save money.

But the unanswered question is, why does this always have to do with sexual things? When did we ever see a president repent for causing the deaths of thousands of people without a valid reason, or letting the poor suffer while the rich get richer? I call that hypocracy. Perhaps we just assume its normal in American society to hold sexual indiscretions as the worst sin.

I am told in Judaism there is the concept of sinning against a person vs. sinning against God. In Christianity I was taught every sin is a sin against God. Somehow we have changed that into every sin involves the public. A sexual tryst, if indeed it is wrong, only involves the people directly affected by it. Why are we so obsessed with the the private "sins" of others. Perhaps we need to take the beam out of our own eye before removing the splinter in our neighbor's.

I've used the handheld shower to clean up, only you have to get in the shower, take off your pants, shoes and sox at least and the water jet does not do it alone, you need something to wash with, a bar of soap, a washcloth or at least a hand. How does this work with a bidet? Seems toilet paper would be too flimsy and what would you do with a washcloth?

It has been my experience that people tend to make errors in their own favor, so I'd give a lot of weight to Rove saying Obama will win. That is unless of course, Rove doesn't like McCain, which is a possibility.

It's interesting how people, especially Europeans, who are anti-Muslim couch their prejudices in terms of defending Muslim women, while these same people are not known for supporting women's rights. As a gay person, I'm waiting for the anti-Muslim conservatives among us to realize that Muslim extremists are vocally anti-gay. It will be funny, if nothing else.

That fact that a lot of the right wing fantaticism comes from a certain religious group makes many liberals conclude that just get rid of religion and we would not have these problems. I think this fantaticism is more a symptom of American culture than Christianity itself.

Second, the militant atheism that engenders this kind of conversation would be equally antithetical to the Scandanavian way of life.

I know he would not be the first president with a parent who was foreign born (that's A. Jackson) but when was the last one?

One has to admire gays and lesbians who rejoice that this country is able to elect a black man to the presidency, when they know that it would not be possible for a gay man or lesbian in America today.

On a positive note, Connecticut defeated a propostion to hold a constitutional convention that could have denied same sex couples their recently granted right to marry.

OK, am I the only one who found this picture and the description offensive? I know that the intention was to support gay marriage, but perhaps unconciously you tapped into the truism in our homophobic society that a great way to insult someone is to imply that they are gay, worse yet, that two men who are friends are really gay. But then I was offended by the liberal public having a field day making fun of Larry Craig, so I may be too tuned into this stuff.

I think the staff of Salon are intelligent enough to realize that bigotry is not only something so obvious as the KKK on a lynch raid, but that it is a lot of the assumptions and ideas in our culture which we carry without being aware of it.