Say what you like about him, and nearly everybody has, this guy is a writer, unlike most of the other cultural columnists on Salon. Read that first sentence for the rhythm, the indirection. Beautiful.

And right. I know those people in the lawn chairs. They were in D.C. last week, just got back in town, spending their retirement menaced by rogue vets stirred up by Rush's tales of how they were going to trash the Vietnam memorial.

It's not a bad country, just the world's refuge for people with wacky ideas and the freedom to express them. What makes us great drives us nuts, and back again.

Which explains the letters on the last few columns. K knows they're out there. Unlike some, he's not demanding you share his point of view. Homosexual rageaholics are fine with him, although he'd probably rather they don't reproduce. Or, like the Bush family, stand in front of the sun on a nice day.

This is, simply, the best cultural piece Salon has published in a long, long time. It's actually positive. The author self-references, but not so we'll know how superior she is to the rest of humanity. She performs a totality, with the piece and the people in it. This is why I was interested in Salon to start with.

And it made me hungry. And I'm only three hours away. If I phone ahead, I can get there about the time the reservation comes up.

Bob Dylan was baptized in Pat Boone's swimming pool! He's out of it!

Leonard Cohen, however....

If so, refer him to Joan Walsh.

My guess is he's too good for her, and will find it out, painfully. She's the one dwelling on surface impressions, and, apparently, afraid to go deeper.

Time will fix. All princesses when gazing at frogs should memorize this phrase, more useful than any Tennis lessons: "As you are, so shall I be."

What are the other changes to come? We'll see.

And I agree on the tiny font. Let's not make the letters too important.

And what's with the permanent name? Anyone over 18 knows nothing's permanent.

Except, I guess, at Salon. For the time being.

Just previewed this. Apparently paragraphing is a thing of the past, too. That'll make 'em more readable.

Apparently, what you see in Preview is not what you get.

Michelle Goldberg is one fine, resourceful, really amazing journalist, and her book scared the hell out of me twice: once when I read it, and again when she reviewed "American Fascists" and said she was sorry she'd toned hers down.

And I grew up with that stuff.

get it together. The story is the media storm provoked by the Democrats' assumption of foreign policy prerogatives normally left to the Administration. This Administration is so arrogant, incompetent, bigoted and just plain wrong that leaving foreign policy to them is dangerous for the country and the world.

The hysteric reaction of the neocons and AIPAC types is expected, and needs to be dealt with. Conason has written one of the best articles on the real subject to appear in any media outlet in the country. That's why he's such an asset to Salon.

Instead of discussing the story, you let yourself get sidetracked by a venting second-waver demanding we address her irrelevancies (either that or a neocon/AIPACer in disguise, hard to tell) and a discussion of Pelosi's plastic surgery. That's really letting the enemy win, at a time when they're finally on the defensive. Since liberals don't believe in guns, you've created the circular bitchslap.

To those who actually addressed the issue, thanks. To the rest, the world is larger than the interior of your navel.

For the most part, I agree. However, you can't completely talk fringe as long as the Washington Post's lead editorial takes the tone it did on Thursday. And Malveaux may be headed for the fringe, I certainly hope, but CNN is pretty mainstream too.

Reading the comments following the Post editorial was pretty discouraging. As a minority writer said, it's apparent that AIPAC mailed it out as a rapid response talking point, and America's pro-Israel mafia fell into line.

The response to Conason's column on Salon today is pretty discouraging, too. Do people not get how important, even historic, this is, even ones who might be expected to?

But this Congress's actions are forming a pattern, and it's a pretty positive one. As one action reinforces another, we should be able to use that to force a recognition of change in media like the WaPo, CNN, and even Salon, and push the fringies back to the corner where they spawned.

The part about "avowed feminist" came through pretty clearly.

Some people veer so far left that they find themselves on the other side of the circle; thus the reference to neocons, or, we might say at this point, just plain intolerance of anyone else's views, or indifference to what's really important in the world.

This story, once again, is about a history making trip, a declaration by the Democratic leadership that they intend to take control of U.S. foreign policy, with the cooperation of the Bush administration or in spite of it. It has nothing to do with headscarves, plastic surgery or how offended you are by others' reactions to you.

It's just not about you. It's about the world. We owe a debt of gratitude to Pelosi for her courage, and to the Democratic leadership for acting in our behalf. If we all care as much as we say we do, we'll spend our energy slamming the right for misrepresenting reality, not reinforcing them by trivializing our most important issue: the venality and incompetence of Bush and co., and what we're doing to set things right.