After watching hours of coverage of Sarkozy sucking up to that 'weak and inexperienced' president, all I can think to say is: Quel un tete de dick! (or is that 'une'? My highschool French is stale).

Poe was the forebear of George Romero. 'Masque of the Red Death,' written 150 years ago, was essentially the same story as his zombie movies, especially 'Night of the Living Dead' and 'Day of the Dead.' The issues of the elites trying to ride out the storm while everything around them is crumbling is a powerful metaphor that Poe explored in the years before the Civil War. It's interesting to see this metaphor played out again with the housing and banking crises. We see the power elite again circling the wagons while the hoi poloi suffer and begin to storm the gates of the priveleged few. The power elite need a crisis to maintain their control. There is nothing about the H1N1 virus that is different in it's progression than the Asian Flu was a few years ago. What is interesting is the timing of it becoming a pandemic. Just when we're beginning to feel maybe everything will be ok in the economic sector, this rears it's head. Keep us afraid. Bush understood that; hence, everything related back to 9/11. Now, we have something else to keep us cowering. It's a sad testament to our society that we need to be kept in fear. The irony of Poe's story was that the plague managed to infiltrate the elite stronghold,so all their efforts were in vain. Let's hope we have the same outcome.

So Debbie Schlussel thinks Muslims are to blame for a white neo-fascist crazy person to go on an attempted killing spree in the Holocaust Museum? What kind of messed up mind comes up with this kind of calculus? And it's the Left that applauds the deaths of US soldiers? I'm sorry, I missed that memo. See, I thought we were trying to keep our soldiers OUT of the woodchipper that's become Iraq. But of course, it's in defense of freedom and everyone knows WE HATE freedom. That's why we support a woman's right to choose; that's why we support equal opportunity, why we support the right of every American to affordable healthcare. But I guess, because we're also against military adventurism in the Middle East, don't want to start a worldwide conflagration in Iran, and definitely don't want crazy ex-felons walking around with rifles to blow away people in our national monuments, I guess we're just unpatriotic socialist, fascists. Being an anti-muslim xenophobe is OK I guess. Damn! It's all that foreign-born nazi Obama's fault! How dare he try to be the voice of reason in a crazy effed up world!

I'm sure you're aware of the old saying 'Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.' I'm making a dangerous assumption by thinking that you are an educator, based on your webname. But I think, if that is the case, you will agree with me that our educational system has become a disaster, in large part because of things like NCLB, means testing for graduation, teaching for standardized tests, and the general lack of an open environment for the free exchange of ideas. This is especially true in classes we used to call 'Civics,' 'Social Studies,' and 'World History' (to say nothing of 'English and Comparative Literature'). When we do not allow our youth to explore new ideas and hold them captive to antiquated, imperialist ideas of a 'White World,' we are strangling the future and open the door for the likes of Rush, Hanritty, et al (and yes, Vonn Brun) to fill the void. A mind IS a terrible thing to waste; unfortunately, there are an awful lot of wasted minds out there, and many of them work for FOX.

The world is ruined by good intentions. I understand you wanted to make a reasonable statement. But there is no dealing with crazy. Bill O, Hanitty, Rush, et al are fucking nuts. Let's just put it out there once and for all. They are evil, disgusting excuses for Americans. They are so against the concept of free speech that they will shout you down or turn off your mic if they disagree with you. You knew that going in, and you played right into the trap. There was no reason to legitimize his propoganda. I often try to watch those shows just to get an idea of what kind of nonsense they actually put out; initially, I figured it might be fun, kind of like watching Colbert. I figured these guys must be dealing in irony and they're so over the top that they must be doing satire. Unfortunately, I was wrong and they just got too depressing to listen to. They deserve to be ignored, and for legitimate journalists (eg, YOU) to go on their programs just fulfils their sense of self-importance. They need to die of benign neglect. One of my greatest achievements in the past 5 years was weaning my father-in-law off O'Reilly and making him realize what a horse's ass O'Reilly is.

Did I say I thought they dealt in irony? How wrong I was. Reading some of these posts in support of O'Reilly and castigating you, made me realize how fucking crazy these people are and how fucking serious they are about doing serious damage to people they don't agree with. I can't recall reading such hate speech. And for O'Reilly and Rush and Hanitty et al to pretend they have no hand in that is either denial to the nth degree or it's wanton disregard of fact. They promote hate speech and violence and are no better than the terrorists they claim to hate; they use the same techniques.