Too bad that the (understandable) racial component of the "tar baby" phrase obscures its very real descriptive use.

In the original story, the tar baby was something that, when you first touched it, you got stuck, and the more you struggled, the more stuck you got.

If there's a better description of what's happened to us in Iraq, I'll use that instead.

Until Al Sharpton apologizes for his crimes against racial harmony in the Tawana Brawley case and pays the court-ordered restitution to the prosecutor he defamed (or publicly reimburses the friends who got him off the hook), there's no reason to pay attention to anything he says. Sharpton is a black George Wallace, and needs his Wallace moment in front of the congregation.

As vile as it was, Brawley is far from his only crime. He was the DLC-contracted hit man who stuck the knife in Howard Dean's back during the last debate before the Iowa Caucus in '04, with unfair and unfounded charges about Dean's "racist" campaign staff. It was that, not Fox's phonied-up "scream," that cost Dean his momentum, the caucus and ultimately the nomination. If you remember that, his attack on Obama is no surprise. Sharpton is to African-Americans what Alberto Gonzales is to Hispanics: a national figure who hires out to do or say absolutely anything for money and power. They're both a disgrace to their people, which means our people, and the country as a whole.

And then there's Al's friend Dickerson. In several months of writing for Salon, she's never had a good, minimally defensible, or, as pointed out by several other writers, even a comprehensible idea. Maybe we could regard her as a cartoon, but she's about as funny as Ted Rall.

With her, Camille Paglia, and Walter Shapiro (farewell Manjoo, I guess, and can we count Rebecca Traister as among the walking wounded?), Salon continues its downward swoop. If this represented progressive political and cultural commentary in this country, we'd be in big trouble. But it doesn't. It's just Salon.