Sysprog's answer is surreal-- surreal because professionals are responsible for what comes out. John King is not some pawn of his editors. CNN has to be judged on their end product. It's not CNN's viewership's job to be deferential to the news agency.

All of is this is some weird elevation of Southern authority-deferential culture. It is a peasant-overlord culture, and it sucks. First we have 'Be Nice to GWB' for an 8-year period because he's the President. Now we see 'Be Nice to John King' or any other faux celebrity, as long as they follow the same spineless, boot-licking code. The thing that is so consistently amazing is the Glenn is called the bad guy for pointing out someone ought to do their $400K/year job.

For those that need more detail, I highly recommend the classic "The Mind of the South" by W.J. Cash. Sadly as relevant now as when it was written some 60-some years ago.

Piling on in a thread with a bazillion other postings is kinda like eating sugar candy. It feels good, but it's bad for you.

Hey SHOOTER-- those people burning the US Embassy in Serbia are CHRISTIANS.

OK-- let me get this straight. Everyone's afraid to offend anyone? Global warming isn't real? All those other countries have better schools and are smarter?

Let me see-- that's why all those other countries that have nothing resembling right-wing talk radio are actively pursuing anti-global warming policies because they're stupid, except they're smarter than us?

And we're sissies with the way that we fight wars? Even when we kill between 150K-650K people, depending on whose horrific statistics you want to believe?

How does this work? Is that how you get a job at the country's ostensibly pre-eminent newspaper? Or a book deal?

Talk about a nihilistic, self- and nation- destructive rut. No question that this country lives in its own fears-- but just adding to this with more destructive nonsense can hardly help.

Hi Glenn,

My guess is that if a D is elected to President, the R attack dogs and upper-middle-class D apologists will fall in to attacking the President and stopping all this. This is because the upper-middle-class Ds have some weird disconnect from the Rs that they feel like they have to validate themselves to what they believe poor people (meaning redneck white males) want.

If any R is elected, then there will be a continued trajectory toward absolute authority.

What we're really seeing right now is more a combo of class politics and the politics of guilt of the privileged than anything else. Yet what is happening is that it is being played out in the context of issues of race and gender, because those are the terms that the public has been conditioned to accept. The Bushes are rich. They have the right to do what they want. The Clintons (and Obamas) were poor, or middle-class. They have no right to do what they think is right, and they must be resisted.

It's too bad that not enough writers are considering what is readily apparent to me. We can't seem to shake the cultural language that has dominated politics for the last 40 years and realize that it really is irrelevant.

Hi Glenn,

What you really witnessed is John King's attitude of cultural entitlement. He's at the ostensible 'top of the heap' and his comments implied that YOU should work to take care of his reputation. YOU should have called him to ask about his work. YOU should have checked to make sure that his editor didn't cut any important questions-- because he's from the entitled class.

You're supposed to help him live in his fantasy world-- and if you don't, you're the bad guy. You're not civilized. It's just more class politics.

After watching the whole Clinton impeachment debacle, I'm convinced that most of the politics that matter in America are class-based. Though I'm no huge Clinton fan (it was nice to have a Prez that was actually intelligent, though) the fact that he came from a lower class, one-parent family doomed him to obloquy from the upper class. There's no other explanation for the silence about W. from the people with money other than that-- because even they are starting to lose money.

I sure wish someone would ask John McCain how he can justify so much human misery by bombing yet another country back into the Stone Age. That would be a good question.