"Much the same can be said of the customs of the "traditional" wedding (the elaborate church ceremony, the white dress, etc.), which were concocted a the same time"

At first I actually thought that this line was an attempt to render a regional accent, "Ah have a wee dram and some ale a the same time, lassie!" Then I realized it was just a typo. Fair enough.

Then there was another one:

"Yet kilts and bouquets have more common with simmering Weimar-era resentment than might initially seem"

Have more common?

Followed by this one:

"To recognizes this is not, she maintains, merely "relativism," but rather the awareness that the threats, incentives and tactics that work on us won't necessarily persuade people in other cultures and situations."

Huh?

Don't get me wrong, I like this article and would love to see more of this kind of thing in Salon and less of Sarah Palin or the editor's most recent argument with some clown like O'Reilly.

People including Glenn Greenwald have claimed that Salon continues to publish the sensationalist travesty Camille Paglia because it simply can't survive without the income she brings in page hits.

Surely some of that money could go toward copy editing.

It locks into a stereotype and repeats it, over and over and over. Science is practiced by "mad scientists". Police are hampered in their efforts to get criminals off the streets by "liberal judges" who throw out murder cases on the slightest technicality having to do with paperwork. Academics are goofy eggheads to a person, missing the forest for the trees, musicians are drug addicts, business people are unfailingly rude loudmouth bullies who snap at each other in every meeting, and on and on and on.

It's like the entire culture is being portrayed as an episode of "Dragnet". All it lacks is the sitar music. Though sometimes that's included too.

As the authors point out, this has real consequences. Anyone who works in the criminal justice system will tell you that the truth is the polar opposite of that stereotype above. While many in law enforcement are utterly decent and play by the rules, a glance at the headlines about police abuse happening over and over is enough to convince anyone paying attention that it's widespread and often winked at, and judges are the ones hampered by "three strikes you're out" laws and the like.

I've long thought that a serious critique of how Hollywood portrays our society is sorely needed, much more than we've seen of it so far. It's the way most people get their images of how our country works, and it's astonishingly vapid and locked into a handful of cliches that are spun out over and over. It's not from any political agenda for the most part but more from laziness and intellectual rot, as anyone who's lived and worked in Hollywood can attest.

Having said all that, the link in the first letter post was fascinating, the authors sound like they could use some critiquing of their own.

Late to the game here but I just wanted to add my wholehearted support for this effort. While I agree entirely with Greenwald on the issues here I think he and Chuck Todd both deserve credit for enaging like this, Todd for responding and Glenn for graciously offering to do the podcast with him.

Whatever one thinks about the issues, this kind of dialogue is exactly what needs to happen. Compare Todd's response to that of his CNN colleague John King when faced with somewhat similar criticism from Glenn Greenwald:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/16/king/

Who knows, it's entirely possible that Chuck Todd learned from seeing King's arrogant, dismissive response (I particularly loved the "I never read you and you're always wrong and misinformed" part) and how it made him look in the blogosphere, but in any case, this is progress if you ask me. In Gandhi's famous dictum, we're up to somewhere between "then they ridicule you" and "then they fight you", but at least have left behind "first they ignore you" for the most part.

Well done.

Yeah, I noticed the slight similarity to that aspect of both Todd's and King's responses, but King's overall response bore no resemblance to Todd's basically respectful, eager, and more or less forthcoming responses, including saying "because I respect your (Greenwald) work so much".

Contrast that to King's very opening line: "I never read biased uninformed drivel so I'm a little late to the game"

I think in fact Glenn's next book should include among the blurbs, right along side all of the "Brilliant" -Bill Moyers" and so on, the line "Biased uninformed drive" - John King, CNN"