I hope Salon publishes more lovely, evocative essays like this.

Says a lot more about the people commenting on it than the actual individuals involved. I originally believed the accuser for two reasons: one, because I didn't think a district attorney would put all the time, energy and rhetoric into a completely false case backing a stripper (oh, was I wrong!), and second, due to my own prejudices against frat boys/athletes.

I genuinely regret the second assumption-- at least one of the accused proved himself a thoughtful, empathetic young man, and I salute him, and feel I judged all those boys wrongly.

But the first assumption, I think, was pretty legitimate. This wasn't purely a case of 'she said, they said,' it was a case of 'she said, they said, and the district attorney backs her up.' For all my cynicism about positions of authority, I believed in Nifong at first-- as a professional, and an attorney with a code of ethics to follow. Dahlia Lithwick has a really excellent piece in Slate today about the power prosecutors hold-- it's linked in my signature.

The media got it wrong, and so did a lot of individuals and bloggers. But I think a lot of commenters here are discounting the impact that Nifong's implied endorsement of the accuser had on people's attitudes.

I assumed the boys were guilty, yes, but I think we all make assumptions when a court case comes up. Presumption of innocence is the legal standard, and one I think we all should live by, but we're also all human. I'd like to think if I'd been in a position to judge these boys or temper my reactions to them I wouldn't have put my knee-jerk assumption into my conduct. I hope, anyway.

I think I was unclear-- this was when I first heard of the case, long before the indictments were handed down. The case lost all credibility for me about the time I found out one of the accused was, as you say, proven miles away from the house when the non-rape occurred.

Good on you for standing up to that stupidity last night. For half a minute, I thought I'd stumbled on some kind of brilliant satire-- but no, it was just another night on Scarborough Country.

It's my understanding that the "moneygrubbing Jew" stereotype came about from the Middle Ages, when Christians were forbidden to loan money at interest. Jews were uniquely placed to become moneylenders, as they had no specific religious laws against it, and thus the stereotype of Jewish bankers came to pass. (There's a lot more to it than that-- Jews were often not allowed other kinds of work, their positions gave them power but also made them targets when times got tough, etc.)

I'm sure someone here has a better background on the history, but I'm almost done with coffee break, so hopefully that at least helps.

Geting her a job at a higher salary than the Secretary of State, with a black-market security clearance, is quite another.

Is it really that hard to spell Aerosmith? Really?

I've got to hand it to Rolling Stone, though-- this is the first time in probably ten years I've read anything from them, and I don't think I've ever been to their web page before. Any publicity stunt that'll give you traffic is a good publicity stunt, right?

Aside from the other omissions, I'd single out "Cop Killer" by Body Count-- huge controversy, changes in the record industry, and Body Count was the beginning of rap/rock.

...though I still think Baldwin was out of line. For me it wasn't so much the name calling itself-- though calling any girl near puberty a 'pig' is pretty nasty-- as the anger and vitrol in the call. My SO thought he sounded drunk.

And in my neighborhood the people yanking their kids by the arm and screaming are what you non-PC folks call 'white trash.' Funny, the kids with the crazy, permissive parents often turn out better in the long run (though Lord knows, not always!).

While it's fashionable (and possibly right) to blame Kim Basinger, I keep thinking maybe the daughter passed the call to TMZ herself-- she's 11, which is plenty old enough to be tech-savvy, and hey, that call would've pissed me off at 11!

A remarkably clear-eyed and respectful perspective of what the challenges are on the ground and what the costs may be in the larger picture. Thanks for writing it, and thanks to Salon for publishing it.

What have we had now, two feature articles about Alec Baldwin? Good thing we're leaving all that celebrity gossip behind.

I'll miss the Fix. I didn't read it regularly, but what I really enjoyed about it (and what I loved even more about Nothing Personal) was the way it felt like a sane, steady hand was delivering entertainment news. "In a world gone mad with celebrity gossip," as the tagline to this article says, what we need is someone just a little outside the fray-- to watch the wheels go 'round and 'round and keep us entertained.

I'm disappointed that Salon's content is now going to be even less cultural, but I'm afraid I'm not surprised.

Here's another difference between the Israelis and US theocons:

"No-one underestimates the need to study what happened in the past, including the imposition of personal responsibility. The past is the key for learning lessons for the future. . .

For all the GOP tells us that teenagers, poor people, people of color, whoever else they disagree with, should take personal responsibility, we've seen no one even attempting to take responsibility for the multiple intelligence failures in Iraq and in the States before 9/11, the debacle in New Orleans, the attorney firings-- hell, no one's even willing to take responsibility for that infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner. It's shameful.

Actually, from what I hear, seeing Wentz's willy made many of those mallgirls quite happy.