I think you buried your lead, in fact the whole story, right there.

...and harder to resist packing tons of connotative baggage into a little carry-on. But can we PLEASE stop using the verbal knee-jerk "fashionista"? Whatever distancing irony it may have had it lost long ago.

...but can we stop using the tiresome formulation "fashionista"? Whatever distancing irony it may once have had it lost long ago.

...as soon as I've had my say on the subject, everybody else should shut up because this is too boring.

...maybe an earring, definitely a blue collar job, that makes guys who don't answer that description envious, no matter how intelligent they are or how well they're compensated. Natural Man, effortless macho, handyman in all senses, etc. Attention must be paid, veiled respect given.

"I am aware there are many gay-marriage advocates who refuse to accept that there really can be a legitimate difference of viewpoint on the issue.

These are the same people who, let me suggest, are not so much concerned about how they live their own lives as they are with forcing other people to accept how they live, to validate the lives they have made for themselves."

Take the exact thing you espouse, support and practice and turn it on liberals, pretending it's one of their characteristics, instead of one of yours.

And now apparently an anti-app app. If you ask me, this is part of the solution problem - the only way you can conceive of to escape technology is more technology.

What's really ironic is that you're saying the same thing from your side of the aisle that I've been saying from mine (no Blackwhatever, no iPod, not even a cell phone for God's sake) for years now - not only is all this constant contact unnecessary, it's counterproductive.

And why does every writer with intellectual pretensions feel the need to work it into their writing lately? Usually I can glean a word's meaning from context, but not so with this one yet, which says to me there is probably a much clearer way of saying the same thing.

...constrained him for a moment?

...in this context. Just the reminder that she presumed to be on that podium herself today, and that many thought that a good idea, is jarring. How long ago it seems, and how lucky we are...

...you elect a vain, incurious, ignorant, arrogant moron to be president, and he'll fuck up the country. Everything else is commentary.

We can only hope that we've finally learned this, at least temporarily.

...Hurricane Katrina, a politicized Justice Department, government sanctioned torture, search and seizure and wiretapping, and the biggest financial meltdown since the Depression didn't work either. Why would this incident raise any questions?

...any article that needs such a high level of cutesy euphemism:

"...you've rid your world of bush once and for all..."

"...biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression would inspire a little fuzz..."

"...near-decade run of absolute clean living..."

"...the fuller landscape of yesteryear..."

"... it does clear a nice path for action ..."

"...those crops are growing back ..."

"...It's nice to have a little something to come home to..."

"...positive feedback with my new coif..."

and so on, and on, is one that should probably not be submitted for publication.

Words are abandoned when they come to mean too much what they mean - everybody has internalized the dictum that defining the terms of the debate controls the outcome. It's too ingrained to stop now.

Witness the word "handicapped" which displaced "crippled" as a more genteel euphemism. But then "handicapped" came to mean "handicapped" and had to be abandoned in turn for something that didn't, which itself will come to mean the same thing.

We try to stay a step ahead of reality, but there is no finish line to the race.

This is a question? This is Norm Coleman we're talking about. Pure smarm is the guy's DNA. That and opportunism.

I'm not certain, but I believe the term "empty suit" was coined by Garrison Keillor to describe Norm. At least the first time I saw it was in Keillor's notorious editorial about Norm's Fitzgerald Day speech, in which his complete ignorance about F. Scott did not prevent him from gassing for 20 minutes about his cultural significance...

...once you understand the world from Sarah's point of view.

She's essentially an infant who can't speak yet and therefore can't conceptualize or understand context, but has the innate ability to recognize approval. She'll laugh and gibber like all get out because she realizes at some subverbal level that Mommy thinks it's cute.

Palin doesn't give a flying f**k about appropriate behavior, about dignified discourse, rationality or making sense. She has no idea that losing VP candidates don't give concession speeches, that viable candidates for national office need to be able to think coherently and speak intelligibly.

She's instinctively ambitious and just shrewd enough to recognize that people are looking at her and making approving gestures, so she gives them more of what she thinks is triggering the approval.

Stop the approval and she'll be sadly puzzled, but will eventually shut up.

...most of them are probably intelligent, fairly well-educated and well-informed, and reasonably sophisticated in their thought processes, much like the average reader of Salon...

Why be surprised they're repudiating Palin now? The majority of them MUST have recognized she was not qualified and now that they have no compelling electoral reason to pretend she is, they simply want to correct the historical record. Can't blame them.

...or otherwise "voting" for a candidate OTHER than the one Mommy and Daddy support, then I'll be impressed.

We like to pretend they have all the wisdom, clarity and innocent virtue in the world concentrated in their little hands. If that's true, why don't we let them vote?

Why is that?