Zach Trenholm's illustration is a real travesty.

I agree. I think the picture was drawn before the NH primary, and was intended to head some completely different article, one about Clinton's political demise. As someone else pointed out here, Hillary did not actually shed a tear. That doesn't seem to matter, however.

However the Salon staff didn't expect the news to turn out the way it did, and got caught doing the same thing that the rest of the media does: trying to predict the news so they can make a timely deadline. They were so sure of it they did not prepare another picture.

That's my guess anyway.

To the remaining war supporters, the Iraq war is basically a football game. Only bigger. Yea Team U.S.! Kick Ass!

The dead are not around to protest, so they are safely ignored. As far as they are concerned, the Iraq game has been a complete win. Half a million dead Iraqis? Who cares? Pretty damn good score I'd say, 1000-to-1 trade for Americans.

The cheerleaders are addicted now, and they want Iran for more of the same. Iraq just isn't much fun anymore.

Eric Alterman is going going to be pissed at you.

I have to admit this is immensely satisfying. Many of those good 'ol Republicans now chasing Hannity through the parking lot were for many years that Fox News was the only media source of "true information." I heard many callers call them "such a breath of fresh air."

Fresh with what -- they never said.

So it has all come back to haunt them? Good. The only better thing that will cap it off (it will take several more years no doubt) is for Murdoch to divest his media holdings as too much of a money loss.

Is it possible Kristol's hiring by the NYT was some sort of attempt to put up a prophylactic against the very kind of criminal prosecutions that he advocates? If so, I suspect the NYT got cheated twice over.

I have always wondered why nobody has ever file a libelous slander lawsuit against these guys. The proof here seems pretty clear -- what's the loophole that protects them?

GG asks:

Has it ever happened before? What past events would you point to as empirical evidence that this can happen and of how it will work?

Didn't the general voting public pretty much reject the Clinton Impeachment nonsense? Granted that did not result in any change of power, but you could (I think you have) argue that had more to do with Democratic dysfunction than the ability of Fox News to drive public opinion. The 23-percenters remained just that, and Gore got a half million more votes than Bush in the year 2000.

Resistance to the right-wing noise machine comes in two prongs: first is the ability of liberals/progressives to deal with the onslaught (many web-based organizations mostly that did not really exist in 2000), and second is that the right wingers seem to have shot their wad. Their platforms are so bankrupt of anything but rhetoric that even the angry suburban white guy has begun to notice. Even better, the formerly apathetic have begun to notice -- what else is driving Obama's momentum? Just look at the ratio of turnout numbers between Democrats and Republicans and the whole story is right there.

Side note: I am a Hillary supporter who, if Obama gets the nomination, will do everything for him that I would have done for her to get him to the White House. No other course makes sense to me.

Show them this article and this book and they will blithely state that this is what Clinton did -- you're only upset now because the bias is now Republican and not Democrat.

I am here to report that in the early '90s the saturation campaign that he describes did work. On me. I ended up not voting for Clinton in either election because of it. My wife and I felt that he was maybe an OK guy (he talked well) but he was just "sleazy" for no particular reason that we could define.

We can define it now. At the time I was busy at work (no excuse, I still am) and not very politically sophisticated. There are many voters in that class then and now. We don't look closely at the details, but the "flavor" that comes through the newsprint and the cable news does the job sufficiently. This is true even if the voter doesn't watch Fox and does not listen to Limbaugh, who are too obviously stupid to spend time on if you have half a brain. In some ways it is worse if you don't because you are lulled into thinking that you haven't been sucked into all that "partisan crap."

Anyway, that impeachment business in 1998 did it for me. That, and Conason & Lyon's book completely turned around my viewpoint about the Clintons.

Will it work this time? I think with a certain percentage of voters, it will. But the game is different now, we just have to play it to win. GG's block is just one small but significant example of how the right wing is losing its grip on the message.