Seems to be a lot of comment here about how the critics didn’t really read the article because the article wasn’t nearly as bad as the headline and subhead. Well, the critics did read the article and still had that reaction. That’s a sign of bad headline writing—it was a serious distraction from what the writer wanted to say. The headline created a frame (as George Lakoff likes to talk about), and many of the writers here are running around inside that frame and having trouble trying to get out of it

The whole liberal guilt thing is ad hominen. When you headline an article with a big disparaging insult it’s like starting a conversation by saying “Fuck you” and then being distraught that the person you’re talking to had trouble hearing the rest of what you had to say.

Probably nobody who logged onto Salon today self-selects to support liberal or progressive ideals so as to have a therapeutic experience to relieve themselves of guilt. As Lakoff rightly points out (and others here have said), it’s about values. Trying to respond to the liberal guilt smear turns into a kind of trial by armchair psychology. If you try to correct it, you’re thin skinned or “getting your panties in a bunch” or unhinged or “just like the Republicans” or hysterical. Or you can be silent and be kind of complicit to the insult.

It’s effective anti-Progressive political rhetoric, so what’s it doing here?

It's overreaching to say liberal guilt doesn't exist. But it's still ad hominen (and inaccurate) to dismiss most Progressive advocates as being driven by self-involved guilt rather than ideas and idealism.

And I'm not entitled to write anything, but I might title my next book "What snark?"

OK, now I feel guilty. Miscommunication is too easy in low-context mediums. Ask anybody who's ever tried internet dating. And sometimes the Salon pool is so full of snarks I fall in.

American Christians, values voters everywhere--meet the Whore of Babylon.

Very well put, RRK1. And yes, Joe Lieberman is an excellent choice for Democrat most needing to be driven out of office. Winning the Senate will be irrelevant if the Democrats remain incoherent.

The people who don’t want to impeach for fear of a President Cheney are letting their politics of conviction be flummoxed by their politics of triangulation (a distressingly common occurrence among Democrats these days).

The impeachment of Bush would make for a powerful and total refutation of his policies and practices. We need that. What happens the day after with Cheney will be largely mitigated by the shockwaves of the impeachment.

Wow. So much opprobrium heaped on Salon for publishing this. Pardon me for being a ray of sunshine at a pissing match, but good job Salon. I enjoyed this story.

I wonder if Laura Albert has considered a new career as a personals profile writer. She could probably channel me better than I do.

The concern about this lawsuit crowding abortion out of the news is overwrought. There’s a lot more going on in the country and the world to distract Americans from the fate of Roe v Wade than the novel legal rants of the NCM. I doubt that anybody who cares one way or another about abortion isn’t already aware about what is happening to abortion access in this country.

Dismissing the NCM’s argument as a distraction seems like an attempt to duck the issue, to not engage, which indicates to me that they may have a real issue here.

It’s very interesting to review the history of how some violent fascist organizations have used social service and community service as a means to obtain credibility, in the street and in politics.

My father grew up in Oklahoma during the great depression. He said the Ku Klux Klan existed in his town, but not in the sense that we know them today, as maniacs with burning crosses and white robes. He said the Klan was visible when you would go to the town’s summer picnic, where you would see a sign that said the event was sponsored by several community service organizations—the Kiwis, the Moose Lodge and the Klan.

The pattern shows up again in the 1960s with the Black Panther Party, which was lauded for its school programs and its efforts to help the poor—while at the same time being a very violent project (I don’t like David Horowitz’s politics, but his observations about the Panthers during his time working for them ring true).

In response to the other letter writers who complained about lack of balance, thank you Salon for running this article. It is so difficult to find representations of the Palestinians as real people in the media. Other letter writers cry for balance, but the media representations of Palestinians in America are so overwhelmingly negative and dehumanized that Salon’s humanized coverage helps to correct the grossly unbalanced, one-sided, almost propagandistic nature of everythiing else that is out there.