Far be it from me to get personal or judgemental about other letter writers, but please re-read the article. I see nearly everyone raging at how Mr. Keillor hates gays, or believes the world has gone to hell because it isn't like the good old days. It ain't there, people.

Mr. Keillor contrasts the way it was when he grew up "before pizza!" and I remember those days myself. I grew up in the same neighborhood as Lake Woebegon. His description sounds superficially like the same good old days that the wingnuts are obsessed by - but read more closely. Mr. Keillor is not worshipping those days, like the mouth breathers do. He's satirizing them. Obviously, not "everyone" had the house with garage and yard, one mommy and daddy back then. He knows that, and assumes you do, too. Similarly, when he talks about the multi-ethnic classroom, he's not condemning it - like the freepers - he sounds amazed and thrilled by the radical change from the near-monoculture of his youth.

And when he pokes fun at the complexities of serial monogamist marriages - hey, he's entitled. He's been there himself. It's not hypocrisy, it's experience. By extending the relative nomenclature analogy to GLBT marriages, why do you assume he's opposed to them? Read it again. Figure it out.

Mr. Keillor isn't condemning the way the US has changed, he's embracing it, in his own dryly humorous way.

It's too bad so many of you just use his columns to get your mad on. Go read an article that talks about Israel, and flame about it, for a change.

Dear Randall Cameron,

You can listen to PHC on the Internet - just go to prairiehome.org and select "Archive". You can select whatever show you want, and listen to it in whole, or by part.

Okay, it's up. All those previous letters condemning Salon and the webmaster may now be removed.

You can't blame us for clamoring after This Modern World, however. It cuts through the crap, exposes the spin, and clearly illustrates how the "conservatives" (let's just call them "cons", hmmm?) quickly change the subject when it's clear they've lost, thus giving the impression of having prevailed on a whole variety of topics, when in fact, they've lost.

Like many good con men, the Cons have mastered the technique of issuing a constant stream of verbiage, or patter, to confuse the marks (that's us) - "dazzling them with bulls***" is the technical term. You get so involved in following the details that you lose track of the overall picture, and end up paying your "20% discount", instead of having it deducted from the total.

The cartoon format, like a schematic diagram, removes all that and shows the structure of the scam. When the evidence proves they're wrong, they hit on an unrelated topic. Watch it on the Screaming Head shows. Listen to it at White House press conferences. Notice when your Con associates do it around the water cooler (or latte machine.)

Thanks, Tom Tomorrow! Another winner.

The "worker ants of science", eh? Let me assure you that they only look like ants from the outside - the far, distant outside. Within the programming world, individuals enjoy something like rock star status. Other programmers are honored to contribute to their code. Have you ever heard of the Open Source Foundation? Of course not, and you never will, not unless or until it brings down Micro$oft. And probably not even then...

Our theology of "The Market" doesn't get this model, either. Why would people labor long hours, on the minimal compensation of the grad student, doing work that isn't part of their assigned job, for the mere satisfaction of producing something good, something useful, something really cool? Something that their peers, the so-called ants, will be impressed by? Businessmen only understand "shareholder value" which is not to be confused with real value, or any value at all.

The Internet phenomenon, initiated with a DARPA study, nurtured by Senator Al Gore, and designed and coded in the rebellious universities of the 1960s, was unpredictable by our current simpleminded dogmas of "the market" and "celebrity." These guys were neither good looking, cut, nor profitable. They were the geeks and nerds.

Time for a better understanding of how people work.

And - lest I forget - don't confuse "programming" with "science."

Thanks for this article, Mr. Keillor! I'm sorry you attract so many flamers. They're addicted to the sight of their own ASCII. Back in your day, a person had to write good to be published; there were editors, revisions, rewrites, proofs, and finally (maybe) your deathless prose would emerge from the presses and be eagerly devoured by the public. Now, any drooling key-pounder can present his spittle-flecked blatherings to the ENTIRE WORLD in a matter of seconds. And they do. Boy, do they ever.

Huh?!?

No.

Albuquerque's Voter ID law was recently struck down by the courts. If you voted in person, you had to show a valid ID; if you mailed in an absentee ballot, nada.

Clearly, this was unequal treatment. But it's funny that Republicans seem to be happy as clams with minimal safeguards on the mail-in vote. Mail-in is the easiest way to cheat. If one were an apartment owner, or ran a retirement home, or Alzheimers' facility, for example, one might send for, receive, and vote vast numbers of ballots that might otherwise be wasted on registered Democrats. Retail voter fraud, as it were. Not an option for the average citizen.

You know, the newspapers and police never got around to investigating that "13 year old boy" who received a voter registration in the mail. Who sent in the application? And why were they so stupid as to send it to his home? It was almost as if they wanted this to be a big news story. Coincidentally, I'm sure, the parents and their pro-bono attorneys were from the Republican Party.