This:

people, black and white, who have been frozen out of politics by oligarchic elites

I can safely say is utterly ridiculous.

The ruling conservatives just spent decades doing nothing but pandering to the religious, not-highly-educated segments of the South. The rest of us had to suffer from a country seemingly devoted to elevating superstition, small-mindedness, and bigotry to institutional levels, watching good men like Kerry and Dukakis lose elections largely because of "values" campaigns that pushed hot button issues in and tried to force the rest of us to follow a narrow, bigoted idea of morality.

This is the main problem with your thesis, it suffers from the same flaws as the arguments about race these days that overlook the history of discrimination and insist that we're always starting from zero. If Southern, white, Christian morality hadn't just been shoved down everyone's throat for years in an attempt to force the rest of us to live by its strictures, it might be a different story.

As it is, the whole idea of treating Southern whites as a disadvantaged group that we should try to "educate" is actually more condescending and arrogant than what Kevin Drumm or any other liberal wrote.

I'd say Jeremiah Wright is pretty crazy in some of his views. If any entire group started echoing these views en masse I'd say the same thing about them.

The other thing you're overlooking is just how small this segment of the population is. Everyone in the South isn't a believer in crazy conspiracy theories, and those who are make up a small part of the entire US population, far less than 20%.

The cartoonist's line about Olbermann meant that Olbermann didn't have to implore HIS viewers not to go on a killing spree, because it's only the extreme right wing demagogues like Beck who are actually inciting people to violence. The fact that Beck has to actually warn against it shows what an irresponsible nut case he's been, and he realizes exactly what he's advocating (when he's not pretending to warn against it).

Olbermann is passionate, but doesn't incite violence or attract violent insane viewers, so would never have to issue such a disclaimer.

Was the point.

Not sure if that changes anything about your post since it was hard to understand, but you know, just in case.

And you were out there protesting those unfunded wars of aggression right from the start, were you?

I know people who were arrested doing so. For protesting the FIRST Gulf War, for instance.

None of them are now screaming about health care reform being a plot to eat our babies for dinner.

People who supported Bush (I know, no one claims to have done so now, those Republicans and Libertarians supporting him to the tune of 90% must have been more Liberal Media Lies) are conveniently tossing it all in the mix now that they have a President who's not of the right, for the first time in nearly a decade.

They were always against Bush. We were always at war with East Asia.

Right.

Canada and every country in Europe provide health care to everyone at less than the cost per capita that we spend. This is well known.

The United States is so much bigger than any of these countries, Paglia tells us, that managing a "nationalized health care" system would be "Byzantine beyond belief."

Well, in that case we better dismantle Medicare and the VA! Because they're only functioning so far by virtue of the fact that no one told them that they couldn't.

Camille Paglia professes her support for liberalism and Obama and her hatred of George Bush, then proceeds to regurgitate every Rush Limbaugh and Tea Bagger talking point in the book. I notice that certain "mavericks" of the extreme right (among which I count Paglia) do this now, as if the anti-Bush sentiment provides some sort of bona fides. It's funny how so many people voted for him in two elections when now, almost no one admits to doing so.

In Paglia's case, she includes the lies one by one: she won't be able to "keep her doctor" because "government panels" will force her to A) give up her current coverage, and B) decide which doctors she can see under the new coverage that they force on her.

Both of these are lies. Lies, not distortions, not misreadings, lies. Whether it's Paglia herself lying or something Rush said that she's passing along, it really doesn't matter. Her confessing that she listens to right wing talk radio "all day long" explains almost everything you read in her columns, except for the "I'm a liberal Obama supporter" disclaimer at the top. This basically has the effect that Limbaugh and Drudge followers can use her as the perfect foil. "See? She's a "famous liberal" and yet she actually sounds exactly like Rush on all of the issues!" This proves, to Rush and his followers, that liberals secretly know that he's right. If you think that's something I just made up or just hyperbole, it's actually exactly what Rush and others say, often.

Paglia is worse than useless. That's the point. She means nothing to progressives here except the infuriating and puzzling mystery of why Salon would continue to give her nonsense a platform, and a target to vent now and then in the letters attached to her column. However because of the "liberal" subterfuge that envelopes them, and that gullible right wing readers actually believe, she stands as a shining symbol to the right that "liberals" really think like Rush and just won't admit it.

Once again, thanks a lot, Salon. I would actually say that this alone pretty much cancels out anything positive you might do toward clearing up, rather than muddying, the national debate.