The funny part is that this is actually less insane than what "The Wingnut" writes every week, and I mean both the clear-eyed conservative statements and their translations here.

Seen another way, it's also another translation basically of what the Wingnut writes each week.

"I'm going to try to explain to you how conservatives think" =

"I'm going to run through a list of talking points from the really extreme right, you know the kind of stuff that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh say all the time, and yet through some combination of tricks of labeling (I'm a "conservative", not an extreme right winger!") and the fact that Salon is always desperate for sensationalist nonsense, I'm getting it published in a "progressive" zine instead of just feeding it to Bill O'Reilly like I used to do for a living."

I realize that the translation has more words than the original, but I turned on "show hidden files" in the translated version.

Stewart expertly skewers all sides of this one as usual, reserving the biggest skewer for the biggest blowhard, O'Reilly, but I'm glad he saw the exchange between him and Joan Walsh the same way I did: two people flinging outraged juvenile insults at each other and adding nothing to the national discourse of any meaning whatsoever.

O'Rielly's show and Salon have very different agendas, obviously, but in one way they're really not that different: Every excess, every choice toward sensationalism instead of reasoned debate is excused with "that's how you get attention, and we need the money to survive".

Your list of extreme right wingers who write columns for the WAPO left out Michael Gerson, Bush's ex-chief speech writer.

This letting Froomkin go is entirely in keeping with the increasing extreme right wing tilt of the newspaper these days, it's not a surprise at all in a way.

Two of the leading Neconservatives, two, count em. And FOX New's Krauthammer, and Gerson, and Will, and on and on and on.

What a shame, what's happened to that newspaper.

The Washington Post has just made itself forever irrelevant.

Or for the next years of the new world of media, which is virtually forever as far as their business goes.

Froomkin is now a legend of the Internet and will do fine, the WAPO is now dying a slow death, in their case following the Republicans into fringe right-wing limbo. The collection of disgraced Neocons and extreme right wingers assembled by Fred Hiatt is astonishingly out of synch with what's happening nationally. They'll soon be as forgotten as the extremists who make up the GOP will be when moderates finally emerge and make it a viable party again someday.

Someone pointed out that the idea that the WAPO was anything but a conservative GOP house organ was an illusion, propagated by the whole Watergate affair, which was an anomaly. Maybe so. In that case all of the lamenting about "what's happened to this paper?" are misplaced, but the fact remains that the Neocons they've built their editorial pages around are a disgraced, fading bunch who will soon be cast aside by history entirely, as will the paper, at this rate.

"The United States remains a center-right country composed of people who believe in center-right values, like family, hard work and honesty."

"Center-right values like family, hard work and honesty"?

As opposed to center-left values like laziness, dishonesty, and singlehood? Or promiscuity?

This ridiculous column is worse than some news-bot reading talking points on FOX news.

The "center-right nation" myth is one thing, and while it's been proven wrong, it's at least worthy of debate. However setting up the idea that the right believes in "hard work" and "honesty" as their defining platform, which presumably means that the left believes in sloth and lying, is just talk radio-level idiocy. There are right and left value differences, but this childish name calling doesn't describe them.

Now isn't the time for irresponsible sensationalism, Salon. There are serious issues to be dealt with and people can hear this kind of clinically-moronic nonsense elsewhere.

One important aspect of things that this Wingnut series underlines is how there's actually a difference between Republicans/Conservatives/The Right, and Neoconservatives/The Extreme Right.

Steve Benen makes this point well here: (click signature for link)

That said, seeing Will and Graham on opposite sides of this reminds me of a point that often goes overlooked: we're not dealing with a dynamic that pits the left vs. the right, or Dems against Republicans. Rather, this is a situation featuring neocons vs. everyone else.

You'll notice that President Obama's strategy has not only been endorsed by Democratic lawmakers, but also prominent Republicans who are in office (Dick Lugar), served in Republican administrations (Henry Kissinger, Gary Sick, and Nick Burns), or are prominent Republican voices in the media (George Will, Peggy Noonan, and Pat Buchanan).

The president's leading detractors, meanwhile, primarily come from a motley and discredited crew who cling to neoconservatism -- McCain, Graham, Kristol, Krauthammer, Wolfowitz.

What I'd like to point out is that this "former Bush administration official", if this is really the case (you really can't know with the ridiculous anonymity granted here) is very much espousing the NeoCon, extreme-right, Bush administration point of view. This is not at all the same thing as what simply "the right" or "conservatives" think, contrary to what he or she would like you to believe.

What too many refuse to grasp or admit is that the White House was occupied by a truly extreme fringe of the Republican party, for eight years. Salon putting this author's viewpoint forward (real or not) as simply "conservative" is naive and amateurish, especially given what Salon advertises itself to be.