especially this:

while Hillary backers were too busy blaming sexism for her failure,

What's astonishing about it is how you take yourself out of this picture, and just report it dispassionately as if you weren't one of them.

I'm sorry it just seems bordering on the bizarre to not acknowledge something of your own responsibility for this while critiquing others for it, I mean since yours was not just an opinion expressed by someone but an opinion published far and wide to many readers.

There were times you criticized Obama for "not doing enough" to combat the sexism of others. The double standard was astonishing, imagine demanding that Hillary not only refrain from any racism as some saw it, but insist that she rush to defend Obama against the racism that was so coming from elsewhere, and blame her for not doing so. No one I saw ever thought to demand that.

I don't disagree with your view of things as expressed here, for the most part, as I say. I just find it bizarre bordering on offensive to ignore the huge, non-stop effort by you and others at Salon at some of the things you're describing as if they were only done by unnamed others.

Howard Dean promised to serve one term as head of the DNC, and he's keeping that promise. What exactly you're calling for, --Barack Obama begging him to take another term despite that, perhaps? -- is a bit of a mystery.

Regarding Lieberman, what Obama is talking about is Lieberman staying to caucus with the Democrats, and almost no one else in Congress is proposing otherwise. What's being debated is whether to strip him of one or both of his chairmanships, at which point whether to remain a Democrat or not would be up to Lieberman. I tend to think it would force him to switch to Republican, and I hope he does.

Painting all of this as some wild swing back to the center on Obama's part is disingenous to say the least. Nice try. He may well do things that seem too centrist to me but trying to portray these two things that way is just bizarre.

"Eat dirt, you sour Clintons, "

Gosh, what intelligent writers Salon has in its pages. What high-level discourse.

I also loved the part about how Obama wasn't accused of things enough, or at all, yes we should have had more Ayers, Wright, and invented birth certificate "scandals", not less.

Right.

Oh and Sarah Palin is a brilliant politician. Got it.

I suppose giving a home for right wingers who love to write that "Paglia is a breath of fresh air!" gives this place some purpose at least.

What a sad state of affairs, when someone like this is published just for shock value.

One thing that's comfortingly predictable: No matter how inane an article is in Salon, there will always be at least a few letter writers who scold all of the others for saying so, coming to the defense of Paglia or whoever it is.

I guess listening to the one percent rather than the other ninety-nine makes sense, in some equally inane Salon sort of way.

Salon needs to step forward and accept the moniker of journalistic integrity

Salon? Needs to do what, now?

Salon, as in the publishers of Camille Paglia?

As in, gound zero for All-Reverend-Wright, All-The-Time, about six months ago?

That Salon?

Journalistic integrity?

I may never stop laughing at that one.

Read the article in full, then comment

If you do that, you'll understand that Michelle Obama's butt is a metaphor.

Do you mean this part?

But now the game is over. The jig is up. Time for us all to let the hair down and let the booty hang out, to put our hands in the air like we just don't care.

Or this?

Michelle started the official coming out with that blazing black-and-red Narciso Rodriguez dress she wore on Election Night, complete with dangly silver hoops that gladdened the hearts of sisters everywhere. She was hiding nothing, and this time she wasn't gritting her teeth about it. She was smiling.

And it was bootiful.

As Salon sinks further and further into tabloid inanity, what's even funnier is that a certain amount of letter writers always jump to try to defend its honor.

The fact that many of the letter writers here complaining are African American women should give Salon a clue. Wait, Salon, clue.... nah.

which is the one element of all this that the author misses.

Since it's the only element that really matters, that's a fairly large one to get wrong.

Thinking that you can logically persuade people to use one term versus another because of etymology is a tried and failed strategy. Language follows rules but not the ones that people like the author of this imagine that they do. They're laws of dissemination, usage, trenda, and so on. Steven Pinker makes good reading for more on how it works.

Words mean what we decide they mean. For lots of complicated reasons, some of which the author describes here, the terms have changed. Progessive is what people call themselves more often now, and it's going to stick. You can call yourself "a liberal" if you want, but it mostly the right wingers who use that term now, and in entirely negative ways. Since the right wingers are quickly losing all the influence they had, that word will soon go with them.

Sorry, that one is done.

Salon publishes Paglia, thousands of readers respond in letters wondering why this Bill O'Rielly of Bizarro World is given a platform here, Salon gets page hits, advertisers follow.

And you're wondering what Pagila has on Salon? It's what Salon has on us.

Pavlovian economics 101.

Some day people will realize that Salon is pure tabloid snake oil, and stop with the absurd "why would such a serious progressive magazine publish x, y, or z?" The answer is that's what they've always done.