I myself am usually one for pointing out that often our appeals to stop today's madness are often scripted with a contrast to a presumably better era or precedent about which people is likely to be a hugely rosy way of viewing a real past.

Yet our earliest evidence of written and oral traditions of 'praise poetry', in which the speaker or writer effusively praises previous leaders of their society and bragging of their nobility and justice, shows that often a hidden purpose in one's over-wrought praise is precisely aimed at pointing out the defaults of today's leaders.

Praise poetry, further, arose both in extremely hiearchical societies where individuals might have feared challenging the royalty or priests, and in societies with much less division between leaders and led.

So although every attempt I've ever made to look back through the archives of U.S. journalism, especially with regard to U.S. foreign policies toward the 3rd world, shows an absolutely miserable record of mindless adherence to the hawkish propaganda of the day -- whether that be the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s -- I certainly understand that one way people deal with today's mindless adherence to today's hawkish propaganda is through modern praise poetry.

Praise poetry styles of criticism may work.

But we are probably strong enough, and definitely worthy of, noticing what has been done incorrectly for generations, and drawing from that lessons of what may finally be done correctly, correcting our systematic wrongs, rather than allowing today's errors to eternally be categorized as a failure to adhere to the valors of the past.

I think that what the right wingers (and thus by extension the mainstream media, who always happily repeat right wing memes) see as most attractive about the Edwards' haircut story is the lavish cost. Therefore, they think it can undercut his image as a populist.

Not that they don't intend to also use it to say that he's a girlie-man, but then, the right wing in this country was able to portray both John Kerry and Max Cleland as war-fearing cowards while Andover cheerleader and failed businessman George Bush Jr. -- who stared blankly for 7 minutes in a grade school classroom while his nation was being attacked -- gets portrayed as a macho manly man.

To the anonymous person repeating the right wing talking point about Edwards' $28M home that confuses populist politics with yurt-dwelling coop anarchist membership, John Edwards could be an actual economic populist and eat Beluga caviar at every moment while having a Bentley built into the Oval Office.

The moment President Edwards (or anyone else for that matter) starts reversing the Reaganite obsession with concentrating all the national wealth in the hands of the top 0.1 or 0.01 or 0.001 percent of the population, it won't matter one bit if John Edwards bathes in bathwater sprinkled with powdered gold and reads daily briefings printed on platinum leafed paper: suddenly the hysterical right wing will characterize him as a class-war populist.

What people are talking about are the policies one advocates or pursues.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his own luxury train and luxury built stop in Tampa, and was from a very rich legacy, yet that doesn't stop the lunatic right wing in this country from seeing his economic policies (which were themselves designed & backed by study groups funded by wealthy industrialists) 'populist' enough to call him a Socialist and Communist ever since.

This is almost as idiotic as those pre-Cro-magnons who think they can debunk industrial fossil-fuel accelerated global warming by showing that Al Gore uses electricity.

Frankly I don't care if John Edwards uses $100,000 worth of orchids every morning to cover his walking path (as long as it's privately funded), if he pursues policies that start to help me and other ordinary working people over this insane obsession with sucking up only to the billionaires, it's alright with me.

Am I the only one who remembers how even the New York Times (and you can imagine wingnut radio extremifying this claim) had cover page speculation way, way, way back in 1990, on how Saddam didn't just have some planes hidden & covered with sand in the desert, buy *may have had* huge underground airbases, and they wuz gonna all you know like zoom out like that movie and so we had to be real keerful of that dangerous wily Saddam?

Now? There? North, East, South and West of Baghdad somewhat? In lines of trucks to Syria? In secret underground airbases? Yet?

Now? Now? Are they 45 minutes away?

Are hundreds of tons of yellowcake being driven in secret caravans of dozens and dozens of large trucks from Niger to Baghdad?

Now?? How about now??

Now? Now? How 'bout now?

Now? I checked the newspaper and no one's found those WMD of Saddam yet.

Now? How about now? Has the president double-checked his notes?

Maybe now? Now? Now? Not yet?