Jim “wants what he wants” and is and “infant” yet you’re the one who moved to be with him on the understanding that “if it didn't work out between us I'd be taken care of.” Since when did infants take care of adults?

Now you want to move onto Bill, who’s supposedly all that and an bag of potato chips.Guess what? He’s not. Like Jim, he’s a tool. You used Jim to escape from whatever and you’re using Bill to escape from Jim.

Hey, if you don’t want to be with Jim, don’t. But don’t pretend Bill is the love of your life. Take care of yourself and stop making the next man who comes along into your savior. You’ll just keep going through men one after the other after the other. They don’t have the answers or the escape hatches. You do.

Is geography really the point? I follow mid-east politics but I couldn't name all the countries on the map. Does that mean I can't have an opinion on Iran?

Not being able to name all the countries and not being able to find the country we are fighting are slightly different things. Do you know where Iraq is located? Yes, this is important. It's basic concrete inforation without which more abstract information dissovles into a fantasy. If you don't know where the country is, it all becomes a giant television show, I think.

I have Musicmatch Jukebox, which I guess is an MP3 player, but I can't tune into podcasts. It's often frustrating. No in the case of Michael Moore, but usually. Is it so difficult to provide transcripts? It seems like in earlier days, Salon did this.

It practically begs right-wingers to come in with a "love it or leave it" response. I think it's no big deal really if he's running away from the country (I always think of Berlin when I think about political freedom). But it's no great sign of political commitment or cultural analysis. I suspect his attitudes are shared all over Hollywood (remember all those stars who claimed they were leaving the country if Bush won a second term?). If the album's good, it's good, but his "daring" stance is not much of a big deal.

I stopped reading. Anyone that wrong that quickly is not worth any more time.

What is remarkable, at this late date, is not how many Americans feel hostility toward Hillary, but that so many still admire her

Who? Where?

It is no surprise then to find Bernstein muckraking the intimate problems of the Clinton marriage, despite the spectacularly embarrassing depiction of his own domestic troubles in a landmark novel by his former wife, Nora Ephron.

In what dream world is Heartburn a “landmark novel”?

It is a sign of changing times that these writers, permanent fixtures of the Beltway journalistic establishment, today feel obliged to acknowledge that the Clintons really did have enemies who were seeking to destroy them.

It’s Washington. Everyone has enemies seeking to destroy them. From Newt Gingrich to Al Gore, everyone is a target on someone else's hit list. To pretend this isn't the case to feign the worst sort of naivety. The question is, was there a “vast, right wing conspiracy” and why was Hillary using the bogeyman of a mighty cabal to detract attention from the very real actions that landed her husband at the center of a government scandal?

What is missing from both of these books is a sufficient appreciation for the political context of Bill and Hillary Clinton's first appearance on the national stage. Rising from obscurity and entering the White House in an era of conservative domination, they were forced to wage guerrilla warfare: sometimes losing, sometimes winning and, despite all their mistakes, notching achievements that look better and better in contrast to the disasters of the Bush years.

So, this is what’s important in a Hillary bio? Not her failure to recognize the threat in her own household because she turned a blind eye to it. Not her failure to recognize the threat in Bush’s push for war because she turned a blind eye to it. No, the important thing is to present a rosy Mr. Smith Goes to Washington image for a presidential candidate. Glad to know Salon has its priorities straight.

Okay, but the term sounds like it was intended to include the man himself, as well as those inspired by him. You don't dismiss "the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style" musical unless you include Oklahoma! and Carousel along with My Fair Lady and 110 In the Shade. And obviously most (all?) readers here have assumed the reference was to Follies and Assassins as well as...well, what are the "Sondheim" style musicals by others?