There is no phony intimation of shared experience. No “we” love Banderas, or “we” find the inside jokes mostly tolerable. The hyper-realistic animation is not assumed to give “us” the willies. This a critic sharing her previous responses in relation to her current response, and leaving our own reactions to ourselves.

Her responses are well-considered, and she effectively brings the movie to life on the page (I feel like I’ve already seen it, which I consider the hallmark of a good critic).

Please, Stephanie, please keep writing in this manner. Let me know your response, because I’m interested. But don’t go back to pretending your response is mine.

An entire faux column has been set up so Talbot can hawk his book. It's like those "medical" web pages that turn out to be funded by pharmaceutical companies (you can follow the link to the pills they sell). Now he's going so far as to review a book he hasn't read, to knock down any competition with his own. This is not just an instance of journalistic standards being flushed down the toilet. This is an instance of journalistic standards submerged at the bottom of the septic tank, smothered in shit. WHY IS SALON DEGRADING ITSELF?

He keeps lying with every "documentary." There is already criticism in Canada for the false picture he gives of their health care system. Of course, his creative use of facts has been well-documented time and time again. Yet so many on the left adore him, and refuse to acknowledge those tedious facts which get in the way of the argument he's trying to make. This happens over and over again. Why do people trust this man?

Divorce -- which in our nonparliamentary system means impeachment -- is the logical solution.

That is not remotely what impeachment is. And if his poll numbers rival Carter, what exactly does that say about Carter? (wish we had impeached him back then?)

Why was Clinton, who was never as unpopular as Bush, impeached for lying about sex, while Bush faces no sanction for the far more serious offense of lying about war?

Because he was found guilty of lying. It has yet to be proved that Bush spoke lies. Doesn’t help that Clinton lied to save his own ass and continue fooling around, while a case could be made that Bush genuinely though Iraq was a threat and trusted (blindly) whatever reports supported that. I am not saying this is what he did. I am saying this case can so easily be made that he can escape prosecution with a much tighter defense than the “depends on you definition of ‘is’” crap.

The main reason is obvious: The Democrats think it's bad politics.

And they are correct. The smartest thing they can do is put personal bitterness aside, and just let this administration run it’s course. Even if they win—and it’s very, very unlikely that Bush will get impeached, if proceedings are brought against him—it will be perceived as payback for Clinton, plus a sign of the continuing antagonism of Democrats towards Bush, which will not be perceived in political terms (the antagonism springs from his manipulation of law and degradation of the country) but in personal terms (one side always has to get back at the other). The Democrats have narrowly lost the last two elections. To suggest they shoot themselves in the foot a third time, when it is almost impossible for them not to claim a victory in the next presidential election, is to promote the exact kind of logic that has held them back for about twenty years now. Do you want another Republican president? And a possible return to a Republican congress? Keep babbling the sort of nonsense this editorial promotes.

HOWEVER

The emotional force behind America's support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It's a national myth. It's John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness -- come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we're not ready to do that.

This is exactly right. And I agree with the basic premise of what follows. The first part of this editorial should have been junked, but the second half is all too true.

My own trajectory has been to go from being angry that Bush was manipulating our need for revenge, to accepting the WMD argument (for a long time after many gave it up; I read a lot of Christopher Hitchens, and if his atheistic arguments don't make sense, his reasons for not trusting the CIA and trusting British intelligence instead were persuasive to me), to now realizing what a con it was, and being depressed, frustrated, and aware that we will be in Iraq for a long time to come.

I hope the effort leftists put into hating Bush could instead be put towards mounting a good defense against the arguments that are soon to emerge for going to war with Iran. We can't go through this again, and we will if we aren't careful. It's beyond Republican or Democrat. It's not about party squabbles. We can't, can't let ourselves be led any further down this path of destruction.

There is a difference between a report and an editorial. Walsh isn't a journalist when it comes to this column—and I don't say that as a putdown. This piece was an editorial, not an attempt at investigative journalism. Salon itself is, with a few exceptions, a collection of editorials.