Isn't this article (untypically for Mr. Leonard, let me stress) a perfect illustration of just what is so depressingly wrong about today's public sphere? In terms of arguments, qualifications, positions in public and private institutions, credibility, intelligence, honesty, these various figures have absolutely nothing in common. They don't even have a common relation to the status quo - some want to change it, some want to preserve it, some don't care one way or the other. What they do (sort of) share is a skeptical attitude toward current financial policy.

But is that attitude justified? That's what I want to know. An expository category that lumps Paul Krugman in with Jim Cramer and Michele Bachmann can only obfuscate that question, and not neutrally, either. Will such a grouping lead us to imagine that Bachmann's perspective is perhaps as informed as Krugman's or will it subtly suggest that Krugman's is as irrelevant as Bachmann's? I think the latter. And of course what doesn't get critiqued at all by this method is the very thing that unifies the exposition - current financial policy.

Rather than starting with arguments and from them trying to develop political allegiances, this starts with a political allegiance - to the current administration - and then short-circuits any countervailing arguments by associating them with other, entirely disreputable public postures. If Krugman makes sense to me, then I'm in the same boat with Bachmann.

I'm not saying this was your intent, Mr. Leonard. I also largely support the Obama administration's efforts in the economic sphere (hard as they are to understand and evaluate). But when we obliterate the distinction between sound argument and opportunistic hype, we don't do the administration any favors. We simply contribute to the deterioration of the public sphere. And that can't be Salon's purpose, can it?

"America remains a center-right country. Its economic values are still based on the values of the capitalist system. And our social values are equally center-right."

That's great news! It means Republicans actually don't have to change anything about our party or its program. We're still in the majority. See, a lot of libs are mislead by totally unreliable indicators of popular sentiment such as election results and polls. They don't possess the power to tap into the public mood by telepathically channeling the nation's reaction to a YouTube video of a beauty contestant's fail. It is, I admit, something of an art. But if I'm not in "Walken's" (wink wink) league, I've started to get the hang of it. The audience reaction to the angel-voiced if fashion-challenged Susan Boyle tells me, for instance, that the Repubs are headed - boo yah! - for a permanent majority, baybee! Everybody loved her, which proves that everybody still loves Republicans and our simplistic and discredited programs and our cynical and patronizing attitudes!

So we don't have to change. Not that we couldn't change if we wanted to. The MSM that somehow made everyone so angry at George W. Bush, even though they agreed with him and everything, those guys are all: "The Republicans are in disarray! The Republicans are losing every growing demographic in the country! The Republicans are becoming a marginalized, regional party of ignorant discontent and embittered nostalgia! The Republican fundraising operation has stalled! The Republican leadership is impotent and overshadowed by infantile populists on the radio! The Republicans have no plan!" I'd like to see their faces when they get to the money quote in your article here, Walken! No plan? How about: "provide effective solutions to the problems facing the country." That's right. Kinda hits you on your obvious bone once you see it written down. Bet you Dems are wishing you'd come up with that. But TOO LATE. Walken's ours, and so's that plan, sucka emcees! We're gonna focus on the problems, not the stuff that's already solved; we're gonna try to solve those problems, not make them worse; and we're gonna do it effectively, not all Katrina. So let's not hear any more about a lack of strategy.

Anonymity doesn't hide stupid. It's there for all to see.

Perhaps the N1H1 virus will indeed transform the dead into lumbering - or god forbid, sprinting - brain-eaters only stoppable by extreme head-trauma. But if there's one thing we know about the zombie apocalypse, it's that the main beneficiaries are groups of shotgun-wielding yokels, Special Weapons and Tactics squads, and roving tribes of meth-addled bikers. If you're not a member of those demographics - and you're still alive - you might manage to hole up in an abandoned farmhouse for a night or two or an abandoned shopping-mall for a month or two, and if you keep your powder dry and your doors locked you might even be able to hold the zombies at bay. But eventually one of these surviving versions of homicidal humanity will show up over the hilltop, and that's - as the Germans say - where funny stops. If George Romero has taught us anything (oh, and he has!), it's that the zombie threat is not in the last analysis their bite but their role as catalyst for all-too-living fascist violence around them.

So I for one am damn glad that Biden is keeping his eye on the ball; as a long-term strategy panic has its drawbacks, but it may just be enough to keep the zombie apocalypse from reaching that Gladwellian tipping point at which its violence becomes self-sustaining and we all go down for the count. If this swine flu thingy is anything like as dangerous as it's now looking like it isn't, only a fool would sit on his hands and whistle. That plane where the guy behind you sneezed? It's setting you down in world that's become one giant tea-party. With zombies.