One last contribution to Salon's July Abba adulation: like a lot of other creepy old white guys (not that there's anything wrong with that), John McCain loves those blue-eyed disco pushers. Any more to say?

One name Obama mentioned that frequently gets left off the media lists, though: Nina Simone. He's got my vote just for knowing who she was.

by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's forces (remember Farhad Manjoo? I believe he's out of political reporting now), so it's a little inconvenient to admit it now. Blackwell is out of power now, spending most of his time raising money to defend the numerous lawsuits against him (a little Wikipedia research bonus: his one book was "coauthored" by Jerome Corsi), and Ted Strickland, the very popular new Democratic governor, is from that Appalachian region Rove is so concerned about.

Is the 50-state strategy worth the money? It's always been a sore point with the Clintons, Rahm Emmanuel and the DLC, who never thought it was a good idea to engage the whole country -- might get some answers they didn't like. The 2006 election told the tale on this. I know I'm looking forward to seeing the results of a full-scale election conducted along the same lines.

Great art is a lie that tells the truth.

Which leaves out the fakers, and most other art too.

You just hit several of the points of the fifty-state strategy. It's why Obama's opening offices in states like Alaska and South Carolina. Wherever you look there are economic problems, fear for the family, and general discontent.

All praise to the hallowed Howard Dean, who diagnosed this four years ago. O's friend Rahm Emmanuel would have tried to win without leaving the Chicago suburbs.

Doesn't anybody remember the lefty Unisex fad of the early 90s (92, 93) that included men wearing dresses? As I recall, they were somewhat saronglike, but with shoulder straps. Looked like absolute hell; it seemed, for some reason, that it was always the hairiest guys wearing them. Many were gay, but some macho Celtic SCA types liked them too, as a variation on a kilt. The whole thing was gone by 94, or maybe I just stopped paying attention, given the unfolding horrors that plague us still. Looking back, just another part of the H. Clinton PC years that provoked such a backlash from the rest of the country. It may be that we're trying again to enter such a period. Everything is a mixture.

Give me the skinny jeans and Twist caps any day. With a 42 waist, please. Now that's fashion.

Even though pickleking (pickleking?) beat me to it, I'll say it anyway:

I guess Nehemiah Parsoff, Actors' Studio colleague of Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger before a long stage, film and TV career, then a second one as an artist, really is forgotten. His name is Persoff.

I would also suggest WWW's contemporary, The Avengers, as the show that broke the Gentlemen Adventurers mode. Now THERE was a gay show, except....

I know a lot of Democrats who have no degree at all.

My (Great) Uncle Charlie had to walk uphill both ways to school and back, and he's been voting Democratic since William Jennings Bryan.

Go figure.

Judging from the response to this "courageous" article, it seems to parallel Salon's political stance of the past year. We like Hillary/like to talk interminably in a closed space with a few dozen helpless people, so why doesn't everyone? We'll just damn those who disagree and win in the long run. What's not to like? You know we're right. Why are you leaving?

O'Hehir's personal life is of no interest to me.

but I decided to be nice. But I hadn't read jacoby's Reparations letter yet.

Well, there you go.

She's not really kidding, is she?

Woman to police (body protruding from behind sofa):

"He misspoke, I misheard and it went downhill from there."

"Killing in response to words or conduct which caused the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged"? I wish you were kidding me.

Here we go again. The worst article since "I Hate Summer," which was the worst since "Abba means God," which was the worst since Bacon Week.

What was that, two weeks ago?

I read parts of this article to my wife. At the end of three paragraphs she had her hands over her ears and was making "la-la-la" noises, begging me to stop.

She was the reason we resubscribed. Now she no longer wants anything to do with it.

Salon has suffered an approximately two-thirds subscription drop since the ascension of Joan Walsh. It's what's not here anymore, but it's also what's replaced it.

as one who's fought the free speech wars for years, almost all the fanatic anti-nipple crusaders I've known have been women. Something about the sanctity of the breast as a vehicle for motherly nourishment and those evil men who would defile the image.

Or simply have an idea of their own.

Your advice is just too good, far too sensible and soul-enhancing. And wasted, because this person is too intent on self-pity and, by her own account, too self-limiting in her choices ever to do herself any good. A new Fran Leibowitz. Like we needed another, or even one, of those.

I thought the real hero of the piece was the tiny cancer survivor dancing on the table while our heroine complained, again, of food poisoning. Apparently we're supposed to identify with her, and it's amazing, from these letters, how many do. And Salon bought it all, thinking it was humor.

As to why anyone who might possibly not like the piece would read (or skim) it, it's the slow motion car crash effect. Sometimes you just can't look away. You have to know how bad it can get.

And if it's Salon, it can get pretty bad.

Really? Justin Timberlake is finally a free man?