Now, now, enough feigned regret at the dwindling of the competition!

Salon, in its present incarnation, is 98% online "Cosmo" plus Glenn Greenwald and Tom Tomorrow. Patrick Smith is good, too.

Apparently-- gack-- this is a commercially successful formula. Only in Amerika!

However, I admit that I'll find it hard to resist at least a peek at the upcoming "Broadsheet" multi-part series: 14,766 Ways to Please Your Man-- and Yourself!

Or the follow-up articles: Should Women Care about Pleasing their Man?

Sex tips and pseudo-introspection: dry your eyes, silly lamb! Salon is poised to corner the market!

I know it's September, but Salon's reaching a nadir with all these "I'm fascinating and smart and ironic and self-aware too, so let me share my drivel with you" troll comments.

Just paraphrasing one of the recent drive-by trolls, incidentally.

Obviously, Greenwald junkies have to find a way to put Glenn on steroids, or find him a reliable supply of really good methamphetamines to enable him to post at least once a day. And I mean seven days a week, dammit!

No offense to either K. Trout or rrheard, but once the comments thread ages past a certain point, from my perspective it turns into Trout or rrheard vs. the Killfiled: trout/killfiled/trout/killfiled/killfiled/trout/killfiled/rrheard...

Only if the sun rises on an uneclipsed thread do others gradually trickle back in. It's like going to a local restaurant/bar for breakfast and seeing regulars arm-wrestling the night before still hard at it-- with the same motley wingnut mean drunks who are too besotted to realize that they haven't won a match. Again, as a regular patron here myself, I'm not dissing the trollbeaters. Cheers!

Anyhoo, Garvagh asked, "Does Susan Rice feel obliged to slander Iran as a matter of form?"

Unlikely as it is that Garvagh is riveted to this thread waiting for a reply, I have one:

Yes. I happened to catch her on a related issue, when she studiously pissed all over the Goldstone Report. Ms. Rice was indistinguishable from Condoleezza Rice. And I don't say that because to me, all Rice looks the same.

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, I need to amend a point from my On the Air: More Tips 'n Tricks comment [link@sig]. I wrote:

• Experiment with cosmetics; we've all done it at some point in our lives!

I failed to include essential caveats: no rouge, and remember that less is more.

Actually, Glenn ought to be able to get truly professional advice on his Teevee Makeover, since Salon is 98% "Cosmo" plus Glenn and Tom Tomorrow. Patrick Smith is good, too.

PS: I had a recent comment "disappeared" at CommonDreams, in the manner of their sneaky censors. It wasn't particularly outrageous or profane. I don't try very hard to second-guess censors, because who knows what motivates them to do their dirty work?

Then it finally flashed on me that I used the term "ziocon" instead of "hasbarist". It had to be "ziocon" that did it. I deeply regret this, since Derbig Mooser's terms "ziocon" and "ziocaine" are just perfect.

Amerikan provincial culture is based on a mind-set as deep as an oil slick on a mud puddle, and as narrow as a needle's eye.

So there's nowhere for Southern and rural tribes to look but up, up, up into the dazzling stadium lights and the stars in the sky. In their view, the Creator of the Universe made both things for the gratification and delight of His devoted servants below.

And on the Seventh Day, He created Football to amuse Himself while He rested.

To borrow a burned-out colloquialism, in the view of local adults and children alike: it's all good.

The primitive but powerful lizard-brain subconscious conflates religion and sports-- especially Amerikan football-- into a single and united object of worship.

And now a bunch of pointy-headed, pencil-necked geek lawyers have turned up like old-school missionaries in the Pacific islands, inexplicably demanding that the natives renounce their harmless, sensuous frolic and put more clothes on while they're at it!

Has any group so literally earned the epithet "spoilsports"?

Ain't it a mortal shame that these days our younguns can't have good, clean, wholesome, moral fun without some godless big-city lawyers sticking their noses in to put a stop to it? Are decent folk just supposed to sit by and let a bunch of mean-spirited atheistic strangers wreck their God-given way of life?

Only if the United States Constitution remains in full force. Fortunately for these victims of secular oppression, Our Elected Misrepresentatives this century have as little use for it as a quarterback on the field has for a set of pom-poms. So hang in there, you sad lil' cheerlessleaders; perhaps your day will come after all!

Meanwhile, why not just have the players run through banners inscribed with the Bill of Rights? How better than to honor and serve The Creator of the Universe than to trash the work of His Adversary?

PS: And maybe they can sneak in a halftime tribute to Rollen Stewart [link @ signature], in which the entire stadium dons rainbow wigs and holds up "John 3:16" signs. That'll give those ACLU devil-worshippers something to think about!