I saw a clip from Glenn Beck the other day in which he looked earnestly into the camera and said that all of this push for health care reform was basically from an ulterior motive.

"You know what this is really all about for Obama, don't you?" he asked earnestly. Then he gave the answer "Reparations".

With this kind of open admission of sheer racism, the view that any health care reform undertaken by an African American President must simply be an attempt to stick it to whitey by providing health care to black people, the curtain is opened. The racist stereotyping implications there are too enormous to count. Those of us without insurance, or under-insured, or who find that our insurance has dropped us because of some pre-existing condition like gallstones we didn't know we had, are all black? Oy.

And so the masquerade goes on, a small fringe group of either the gullible and easily manipulated or those who are racist themselves (there are some in those crowds who clearly are, let's face it) gets all of the media attention which gives the false impression that the country is "divided", you always hear that word, divided, between this tiny, perhaps 15% at best, and the other 85% who aren't these extreme right wing screamers.

Some "division".

And so the choices are whether to allow this house of mirrors to be built, whether to go along with the charade, and feed the media frenzy about how these are not only serious, thoughtful people, but that they represent half the country, as the David Broders always tell us, in that quest for false "bipartisanship" he's always pushing, wherin Republicans always get half the consideration, no matter how small their numbers (currently not much higher than that 15%, though perhaps representing slightly different people, to some degree).

Or, we can fight this distortion and call these people what they are: Either gullible and ignorant or suffering from racial prejudices, thus leading to these insane claims.

In other words: stupid and racist.

Glenn Beck is openly racist. People who follow him like apostles (read about the woman interviewed by Laurence O'Donell who turns out to be an organizer of "Glenn Beck action groups" who's active on the right since 2006, and clearly hasn't the slightest clue about the topics she's addressing except that Glenn Beck said something that made her so angry, that she can't quite put her finger on when asked about it) are either racist, ignorant, stupid, or all three.

You can still educate people if you acknowledge that they're uneducated and misinformed and racially prejudiced. In fact, it's a good place to start.

To be fair to David Broder by the way, he actually wrote a column recently in which he called out the screamers on the right as well, basically, racist and stupid. I was amazed. There may be hope yet, but only if we finally drop the MO of always trying to be nice to Republicans at all costs. When even Broder gets it, you know you're behind the curve if you're still calling for kindness to the screamers. They don't deserve it.

It's interesting what you say about Pulp Fiction, it's the only Tarantino movie I've ever seen and I hated it for precisely the same reasons you did. Yes I understood that it was meant to celebrate and bring to the screen the world of pulp fiction, but I found it did so stupidly, the way the worst kind of Hollywood movies do, glorifying the violence in the worst kind of adolescent way.

I never saw another one by him since, since I hated that one so much. I'm not really tempted to try, but it is interesting to read that you felt the same way about it yet liked others of his.

You dropped it, got it wet, and then are writing a whole column to complain that it stopped working a few times?

I say "how weird" mainly though just in the sense that mine has worked perfectly since I bought it, it does everything it's supposed to do, and is a marvel in my view. And yet here are all these complaints, which as you point out number more than just yours, clearly.

My only complaint now is that my New York Times app is slowing down a little, my suspicion being that it's typical software bloat, meaning that the NYT is adding more images and advertisements to the feed which they probably test with the latest iPhone 3Gs which is a little faster at handling things. I'll probably upgrade to that next year but in the meantime I may write to the NYT and let them know that they're overloading my current one somewhat and ask them to tone it down a little.

But I mean, yeesh if that's the biggest problem I have, I'm not even going to classify that as a complaint in the scheme of things, if I imagine for instance complaining that my old Motorola flip phone was "a little slow loading the New York Times Web site" -- that doesn't even make sense, and it tends to put things in perspective.

I get the impression that a lot of people bought an iPhone when they really just wanted a phone. Or the other extreme, people acting as if it should be as easy to type on as their computer. Or something.