Okay, first off, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm almost at the point where I'd like to put a moratorium on using the word "change" to sell yourself to voters until, say, 2028. Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and for all I know Kukla, Fran, and Ollie hyped "change." Like "sovereign" or "decimate," it's current usage only bears a passing resemblance to what it actually means.

That being said, I don't have any idea whatsoever how Hillary Clinton can talk about being the "candidate of change" while simultaneously harking back to her political experience as first lady and voting for things like Kyl-Leiberman. Wanting to take us back to the Clinton years may or may not be a good thing (I wouldn't mind another 8 years of economic growth, personally), but asserting that it represents "change" seems pretty silly. And like she's copying her test answers from the next guy. (Same with Edwards, Romney, and anyone else who's picked up on the whole "change" theme.)

And Joan; "The comeback chick?" That ought to make everyone overlook her gender, eh? "Blech" on that one.

It would be really easy to shake up the debates: make them real debates. You know: have the candidates debate each other, instead of answering questions from a moderator. Have the candidates ask each other questions. That ought to do it.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

I think Walsh is dead on about the rapid devolution of the New York Times. When not writing about the Clintons, it used to be that Dowd could sometimes be funny and sharp; now she just seems unhinged. Their continuing stenography (as Glenn Greenwald puts it) of the "anonymous" utterings of administration spokespeople and "highly placed Pentagon sources" is absolutely appalling. And of course hiring Bill Kristol is nothing short of deranged.

(It strikes me as nothing short of hilarious that, just a few days after Kristol brought his wrong-headed partisan schtick to the Times, I received a subscription solicitation from them. I stuffed all the rest of the junk mail I had received that day in their pre-paid envelope, wrote a note on their subscription form that stated, "After hiring Bill 'Never Right' Kristol, you want me to subscribe? Ha!", and mailed it back.)

It's incredibly sad that the "paper of record" has come to this. And maybe I'm being silly, but I don't think it's reasonable to compare Salon and Paglia to the Times and their stack of lameoids. For one thing, Salon is most certainly not the "paper of record," and has only been in business for, what, 12 years? And for another, Salon has always had people like Paglia providing material. I agree that the Paglia of today is nothing like the Paglia of 10 years ago, but the fact remains: Salon has always had a Paglia, or a Keith Olbermann, or a Sidney Blumenthal, or a Glenn Greenwald, or a Susie Bright, or whoever.

We are watching the collapse of some once-great media sources--the Times, the Post, the T.V. networks, the newsweeklies--and it's horrible (and darn disturbing) to see.

Actually, the unfair and pre-decided narrative-driven reporting coming out of the press (well covered by Glenn Greenwald) is my problem with this whole thing. With regard to Russert specifically, I continue to be astonished at how he is viewed as a "tough interviewer." He wasn't very tough with Cheney; if he had been, I don't think Cheney's staff would have felt "Meet the Press" was a "good format" for them to use "often." And of course there was his fawningly-respectful "interview" of President Bush in 2004.

No, Russert is only tough on the people he dislikes, and it's clear that, like much of the press, he really dislikes Hillary. There's plenty of company for him in the anti-Hillary bandwagon, of course, but I think it's just absurd for him to continue to pretend to be objective and a "tough interviewer" when he's tough only intermittently, and only with certain people (generally Democrats, it appears).

I am not a Hillary backer; heck, I don't even like her that much, honestly, and will absolutely not vote for her in the primaries, and have to hold my nose to do so in the general should she be nominated. But even I have been appalled by the post-"crying" take-down. And Russert's careful out-of-context clip usage is simply unforgivable. It's his program; he had plenty of time; and yet he still felt it important to quote Bill Clinton out of context. (How would Russert look if we quoted some of his Libby trial testimony out of context and hammered him on that?

So I don't really care how Hillary held up, honestly; what I care about--like Greenwald--is how ridiculously the playing field has been tilted by middle-aged (and older) white men and a few angry women (e.g., Maureen Dowd). It's disgusting.