.....But, part and parcel of her grubby pan-cultural solipsism, is her function as nonpareil bait for some of Salon's most worthwhile letter-writers.

As venal, shallow, and unsubstantiated as her eyelash-flutter 'points' are, and as much as I agree with said letter-writers that Salon's limited budget could be better spent on less-marquee names with more to offer than her tired old contrarian-canards-non-sequitur-into-starstruck-glitterblather shtick: the silver lining is the heartening cogent responses I've just read.

Thank you:

dogtooth-stp

boppitywop

bear90

cokane

Crotus Haereticus

SanePerson

jackcaughran

Daydreamer

Buck D

Ben Sen

Typesbad

lonestarslp

toine99

If the Paglia.worm can attract such salient, articulate, and incisive responses from the readership here, then perhaps her baiting does something to counter the ignominious travesty of a Salon article citing a Drudge poll in all seriousness..... (!)

.....Well, partially counter. At any rate, thanks again to the above respondents for shoring up the brittle, crumbling remnant of my regard for this sometimes-bastion of independent journalism (hello, Glenn Greenwald! You deserve more than approbation, and I sincerely hope that your efforts will reap well-deserved rewards in the form of prestigious journalistic honors) -- even if that regard, with those precious few Greenwaldian exceptions, is to the readership's credit, rather than to that of a truly passe poptart-pundit like Camille Paglia, whose faux wit (and occasional turn of a genuinely clever phrase) invariably produces this sort of vapid, myopic pablum.

[Sorry for the labyrinthine mockery of sentence structure: this stream-of-consciousness was posted on a lunch break and I have not the time to edit. At least, unlike Ms. Paglia, I'm not getting paid for my free association!]

Ah, I remember reading Heather's columns from time to time in the past few years with a trifling fondness. Their subjects nearly always shows as uninteresting as the lion's share of television, I nonetheless enjoyed her idiosyncratic writing voice.

I'm happy for her that the tint of her figurative goggles provide for enjoyment of that newfound pinnacle of insipid banality, the reality show. Since she's a TV critic - and reality shows' disposable-thus-malleable-"talent" + scant-production-costs = bean-counter-execs making this tripe more and more predominant - it's essential that she revel in the venal tedium of these most vapid Warholian McEntertainments, lest a disconsolate misery descend upon her state-of-mind from the dross and dreck piling ever higher.....

That said, this column sealed it for me: Heather's amusingly jittery contrarian-Angeleno mode - at one time enough to even provide a few moments of genuine fleeting epiphany (for example, her eulogy for Six Feet Under, undiminished by my ambivalence toward the show) - has calcified into shtick, to this ear..... and when she extolls the virtues of The Pick-Up Artist: well, don't look down honey: but, you're mid-jump, and directly below you?

That, there, is a shark. Toodle-oo.

@ DcLaw1

Thank you for your concise, yet extraordinarily articulate dissection of the "Strict Constitutionalist" homunculus*.

Your closing line was simply too good not to blockquote:

There certainly are more and less consistent or principled applications of constitutional law, but people who hide behind the banner of "strict constructionist" or "originalist" have simply found a very fashionable way of foisting their own biases on the less informed.

* (metaphorically, dig?)

.....it occurred to me just now as I read today's comments that you people are the antidote / counterbalance to the vapid drivel blaring from countless car-mounted televisions and the vacuous dreck staring from the umpteen tabloid covers in line at the supermarket.

The existential despondency that I feel rising (with my bile) at every snippet of talking-head browbeating, and every fragment of gossip-glutton nattering, seems to snuff out whatever infinitesimal hope I might, at that moment, hold for our species.

But when I see the work that Mr. Greenwald puts in, day in and day out, in the pursuit of actual truth against the backdrop of a postmodern funhouse-age resurgent with the narcissism of magical thinking, I am truly humbled. I am heartened, as well, by the often-incisive contributions of the folks in this comment section.

So: ondelette, Jordan Orlando, shotgunfreude, Yellow Dog, (just to name a few whose posts realy resonated with me today): thank you for the continual reminders that the glitter-strewn gutterways that are our mass media do not represent the best of our people.

...yes yes I know them good us bad. We need to justify this piece of human garbage. We're liberals.

So, what, you're going to just leave behind that slipshod straw man you so carelessly tossed together? At least burn it before you go!

It makes sense, really -- your preternatural lack of insight, I mean -- in light of the fact that it's damned hard to think straight when you're so busy putting words in "Liberals'" mouths.....

Sir, as a daily lurker and occasional commenter here on Unclaimed Territory (and one who can only laugh at your asinine proclamations of Greenwald's putative sainted status amongst his readership), I've felt secure for some time in the knowledge that good ol' Shooter was the be-all and end-all of UT trolls.

That certainty, however, has fallen by the wayside in the wake of your benighted return to this forum. With each of your capricious and myopically self-aggrandizing tantrums - bereft as they are of any semblance of coherence, equanimity, common courtesy, and intellectual honesty - you prove your persona here more onerous, more irrelevant, and more spurious than even Mr. 242 could manage.

I, for one, will forthwith skip each and every one of your sorry excuses for contributions here; such religious consistency is quite rare for me, but in your case you've amply demonstrated the worthlessness of your prattling.

I can only hope that the regular commenters here (whose contributions are, on the whole, worthwhile accoutrements to Mr. Greenwald's column) consider ignoring your blather as well: their commentary should not be squandered on such an abject waste of time as you have proven yourself to be.