As others have pointed out, Obama's annoyance was not about the toughness of the questions but about the stupidity of those of the first 45 minutes. Can you imagine such nonsense in the famous debates of the past? Lincoln-Douglas, Kennedy-Nixon, Carter-Reagan? No journalist with any self-respect would ask about such tabloidical nonsense, pandering to the knuckledraggers of the nation when so many more important things are at stake.

That it now happens is because broadcast journalism has been greatly corrupted in this country. It always has owed a debt to the commercial side of its employing broadcaster, but the great ones nevertheless operated under a vow that they would follow the highest standards of the profession. Much of that is gone now, and it went long before the competition of cable or the Internet. I date the downfall to the day more than 20 years ago when Laurence Tisch bought CBS and put the news division under Entertainment and slashed its budget. The danger of that tidal force was illustrated when "60 Minutes" pulled the story of the Brown-Williamson tobacco whistleblower, some say because Tisch owned a tobacco company.

I think the country has been in grave danger of becoming an authoritarian state (the polite word for fascist) since George W. Bush became president, and only the Internet with its immediate access to like-minded people has saved us and the ability to contribute to candidates like Obama. Still, the networks are a daily meeting place, and we should protest, as Obama did, when they demean their own duties to the public.

This column is just wacko from beginning to end, a piece of creative writing that is good for one thing only -- it is an example of how you can alter reality just by imagining it, which is possible when the aspects of reality you are altering are, or affect, the perceptions and attitudes of others.

Another example is the Iraq war. The neocons and the McBushes think it's a conventional war with an enemy that we are slowly defeating, which will result in our presence there for the indefinite future, as we are in Korea, Japan and Germany. The Iraqis think it's an occupation by crusaders who have no right to be there, and who are infidels bringing trouble to some of the holiest sites in Islam. Our new government there thinks it also offers opportunities for looting the U.S. treasury and yanking us around in terms of policy while getting us to fight their battles for them. The Shiite militia also think we are an excellent source of funds and materiel with which to kill us and drive us from their country. The Sunnis have more trouble getting money from us, but they have stolen more than their fair share of our materiel and are getting funds from our ally, Saudi Arabia.

So vex me not with talk of Obama's elitism. It has taken a journalistic electron microscope to find this issue and put out of view all the real ones. The media did it to keep their circus entertaining. Information has nothing whatever to do with it. This article is part of the clown acts.

Women know Cheney's type well -- the short man who overcompensates for his stature by being extraordinarily aggressive. Short Man Syndrome. SMS. Napoleon, for example. Of course, in Napoleon's case, he himself would at least get into the battles he started.

Cheney, on the other hand, is a draft-dodging coward who preoccupied himself during the Vietnam War with hiding from his draft board behind his student exemption while tens of thousands of his countymen were giving their bodies and their lives in service of that stupid war. Now, in the walking psychosis that brings horror to the world, he says to himself, "Well, that Vietnam War was really nothing to be involved with anyway; I'll show everyone what a real war is like."

So he cooks up the Iraq War, along with his fellow PNAC fanatics. But Cheney adds this maniacal thesis to the mix, documented in Ron Suskind's excellent book, "The One Percent Doctrine": if there is but a one percent chance that some perceived enemy might do harm to the U.S., it is permissible -- no, necessary -- to attack them. That is, if there is a 99% chance that that country intends no harm to the U.S. -- we attack them anyway. Most societies usually institutionalize people for talking like that, as a danger to society. But in America, we elect them twice to high national office.

So the result is, we've got a maniacal midget running around Washington, propping up a confused cretin and using every bit of his power to crank up wars all around the Middle East, currently against Iran, which Seymour Hirsch reports he wants to drop nuclear weapons on.

The horror of that notion has subsided in the months that have gone by since its revelation. But these lunatics are determined men. They want to bind the next president to perpetual war in the Middle East, for the pride of America, for the protection of Israel and for the glory of their Christian God. So this year's October surprise could be the biggest of all.

I agree with Yerevan's suggestion. I went to a wonderful YMCA summer camp in Colorado half a century ago, and they went pretty light on the religious stuff. Grace was said at mealtimes, and there were services on Sunday, but they weren't mandatory. And that summer there were a few dozen Jewish kids from Chicago in attendance, which was fun and educational. In fact, there was a fat kid with a beautiful voice who the others said was going to make a good cantor, and on Friday evenings there were Sabbath services we were invited to attend, and the song of Israel was raised to the mountaintops. The chaplain was Unitarian, who cheerfully debated the Virgin Birth with conventional Christians.

Send the kids to one of those. You can't go wrong.