The reader letters are often the best thing about Salon, and easier to digest than a Table Talk discussion that has likely been going on for hours by the time one peeks in on it. As long as the chaff can be kept to a minimum, I say go for it.

(And I promise my next letter will be more interesting than this one.)

I think the relevant passage is this:

The turn in public opinion against Bush has been slowly considered and is therefore also firm.

We on the left have waited five years for the scales to finally fall from the public's eyes. The seven befuddled minutes after the first plane struck the Twin Towers would do it. The train-wreck debate against John Kerry would do it. The Downing Street memos would do it. The 1,000th casualty in Iraq, the 2,000th, Cindy Sheehan. We've had to endure disappointment after disappointment, as Bush's popularity has remained stubbornly immune to ... what do they call 'em ... oh yes: facts.

So while I'm cautious when Blumenthal proclaims a sea change in the public's perception of Bush, I also think it may finally be true. Bush voters still even intermittantly inhabiting the reality-based community have had to let a lot slide over the last several years. However, the day must come when you can't tell yourself another lie, rationalize another failure or excuse another scandal. It does feel as if the public is finally Bushed out. And if it is, how is the President going to win it back? More divisive cultural "issues"? More pie-in-the-sky promises about missions to Mars or solving poverty? Not while people are dying in Iraq. Not while the President's top advisors are nervously waiting the day when an indictment drops onto their desks.

We've turned a corner. Bush will certainly recover some of his popularity; three years would be an eternity to dwell in the cellar of sub-40% approval ratings. But he'll never again be the steadfast, resolute pseudo-king that Karl Rove and Fox News have taken such care to beam into our living rooms every day. In a way, the next three years will finally give us the Bush presidency we should've had, the presidency that would've unfolded had there been no 9/11 and no Iraq war: a remote and incompentent executive, forlornly trying to wind up enough fanatics to enact a radical agenda unconvincingly hidden behind Orwellian doublespeak. The next three years will be a long, hard slog for Bush--and for us all.

Thank you for writing that superb tribute to a superb book. It's sometimes said that Daredevil is the superhero comic for people who don't read superhero comics, and there is a tragic quality to Matt Murdock's contradictory existence that transcends his pulpy, Silver Age origins. Miller was the first to discern the ultimate futility of a rational, successful lawyer driven to violate the very rule of law he's studied so hard to defend, but Bendis has brought the contradiction fully into the light, pitilessly exposing angle after angle even as Matt Murdock resorts to ever more desperate efforts to rescue himself from his ever-growing self-righteousness. Yet you can still admire Murdock for his incredible courage, his determination to see himself through an impossible situation by sheer willpower, even at the expense of those closest to him; the qualities that make him tragic also make him heroic. It was terrific stuff, and Maleev's superb artwork made each issue a pleasure to look at as well as to read. Daredevil won't be the same without them—though Matt Murdock, were he given a say in the matter, might well be rather relieved.

John Cleese — a "didn't he used to be funny?" comic in his own right — said a few years ago, "Work in itself hardly attracts me at all. I had a cup of coffee with Steve Martin yesterday; he and I agreed that it's only people, the thought of working with someone, that draws us toward working." Who knows — maybe Martin just wanted to stare down Beyoncé's blouse for four weeks?