While I agree with the thesis of this article, i.e., Democrats need to take the fight to the Republicans instead of just saying "we don't suck as badly as they do!" I wonder whether the Democrats have the stomach for the type of protracted battle that will be required.

I have long hoped for the Democrats to start maneuvering like they did yesterday and I applaud Senators Reid and Durbin for finally getting in the game. There is no doubt in my mind that yesterday was a big "W" for my side. The fact that Bill Frist sounded like a caricature of an especially shrill harridan tells me that he got hit where it hurts.

So, the Democrats win the day. There are, I believe, about 1174 more days of the Bush presidency. We need to string a few weeks of this together before I can really start believing. I have been saying for years that we need to actually fight the Republicans and I have been tantalized by the prospect of a fight and ended up disappointed.

The Democrats need to come up with a message and they need to hammer it. They need to get into floor fights. They need to get combative. The more pissed of Bill Frist gets the better. I am sick of people labeling me and my party as a bunch of weak-willed, recalcitrant liberals. I am furious over the fact that my party has been so willing to allow this characterization continue. We may go down, but can we at least go down swinging?

I completely agree that the metaphorical landscape of rock & roll is strewn with the literal corpses of brilliant and unbalanced artists. But Sid Vicious? I realize that this is very tangential to the review of Johnny Cash, but Sid Vicious was not brilliant and he was not an artist. He was very fortunate to have been John Lydon's friend when they needed a bass player in the Sex Pistols. He was punk's Ringo Starr but with less talent. His only real ability was being in the right place at the right time. His contribution to the group was his willingness to fully embrace the sex and drugs ethos of rock music. But don't lump him in with truly brilliant musicians. The simple fact that he was a part of something huge does not bespeak his greatness. It merely says that he had excellent timing.

I am not smart enough to argue with Camille Paglia. In fact, it is an act of hubris for me to even write a letter commenting on something she has written. But after reading this piece I was left feeling very unsatisfied. She said almost nothing that I couldn't have learned by simply reading a newspaper or watching ESPN News.

The entire column is a recitation of the TO saga. Not only is it a simple rehashing of what we pretty much already knew, she left out two pretty important events in the undoing of TO. While Paglia, possibly incorrectly, blames TO's wearing of Michael Irvin's jersey for desroying the faith the team had kept with the fans, she fails to mention that TO specifically called out McNabb by saying that he (TO) wasn't "the one who got winded" during the Super Bowl. This is a huge slap in the face to McNabb who was already a Philly sports hero. If he is going to say something like this, people will be outraged, especially in a sports-minded city like Philadelphia.

The other thing TO did that Paglia mysteriously fails to mention is when TO said that the Eagles would be undefeated if they'd had Brett Favre as thier QB instead of McNabb. Insulting a local hero once could possibly be overlooked. But if you do it twice, you can't really make the case that it was an accident or "taken out of context."

While the jersey was a slap in the face to the fans, it was insulting McNabb so viciously and publicly that really did him in. I can't believe that Paglia missed these two critical events.

And then Paglia provides little analysis. She concludes that fans broke away into two camps supporting the ostensibly "white" McNabb who had the nerve to take endorsement deals or the far more genuinely black Owens who was, they believe, willing to call a spade a spade (both literally and metaphorically). Wow, Camille. You almost seem to be saying that Philadelphia is a city that hadn't known racial tension before this spat came up. That can't be your point, can it?

While the sports fan in me really dislikes Owens, I don't think it's fair to blame him and McNabb for some sort of racist renaissance in a city which has had so many racial problems. While TO's ego would no doubt be stroked by the mistaken belief that he wielded so much power, you simply can't get there from here.

Hey King-

This doesn't really have anything to do with your column, but I can no longer find a link by which to email you.

I am pretty sure that you have previously talked about the NFL's record on hiring minority coaches and referred to the fact that it's good to have such a policy in place as the NFL now has because it forces some out of the box thinking. I believe that I have seen you reason that by at least requiring that all teams interview a minority candidate, it might help promote not only diversity but also prevent teams from recycling old and not very good head coaches. You know, like Wade Phillips.

Anyway, now that the Chiefs have all but hired Herm Edwards, and the Colts are Tomy Dungy's second go 'round, I am wondering, are we now in an era where NFL teams are simply recycling African-American head coaches just like they do the white ones?