Bring back AudioFile.

Stooge means "idiot lackey." Cheney is nobody's "stooge." He is the boss. If anybody is the thrid stooge, it's Bush--although Cheny treats the rest of America as if we are all his stooges.

Bergman does Salinger! Wow!

(Or did he already do it and call it Hannah and Her Sisters?)

If they are worth a damn, critics hardly ever tell you if they "liked" or "disliked" a work. Critics' job is to describe in such detail that you know what the film (or book, or television show, or and-so-on) is about and how the artist approaches the topic aesthetically. If you need a consumer guide, you can use criticism, but you have to put in some effort of your own when you approach the critics.

BUT, if you are looking for a thumbs-up, thumbs-down reduction and learn that 92% (92%!) of reviewers approve, you might want to give the movie a chance.

(How can you mistake Zacharek's review for anything less than kudos?)

Poco: One word in the following sarcastic sentence belies that claim.

"Not one story about the amazingly effective democrat congress."

And he'll be so happy to see his wife and kid that he'll never, ever show up on CNN to "discuss" politics.

He thinks that he got away with it.

Deep in his heart, perhaps he thinks that, since he's getting out unindicted, he's a winner.

Somebody should remind him, though: no matter how much a myth he was or is or ever will be, he's no Lee Atwater.

So that's where the Weekly World News reporters are working now.

I mean, something that's coherent.

Linda Burke, of Hilton Head, SC.

End of message.

What has the genre of those works to do with their usefulness in supporting or rejecting arguments?

Let's put Marianne Pernold Young and Linda Burke--the woman from Hilton Head, SC, who asked McCain how to beat "the bitch"--into the same coffee shop this time.

(Why have shitty little restaurants become the Marketplace of Democracy?)

Laura Miller's typo is as inadvertently brilliant as Maya Angleou's (in)famous "dried tokens of their passing."

I am surprised that more people don't get the point that Michelman inadvertently makes: that you should not expect a do-over if you are a grossly inept feminist (or anti-war, or civil rights) pundit.

"I didn't expect Chris Matthews to be so mean to me"? Fucking terrific.

Whoever he is, he has the rant of the looniest Republican down pat (except that he takes it too far sometimes--e.g., the "Sieg Obama" overkill).

Didn't it go flat last week?

Or was it that there was so much media goodness in Joe "Jumped the Shark" the Plumber that the McCain crew have been saving it for later?

Rash is the real deal, an excellent poet and short story writer who has written a great novel (One Foot in Eden) and two very good ones (Saints at the River and The World Made Straight) before this one. Serena, with its grand and sometimes bizarre gestures (the eagle, the one-handed henchman), is both greater and lesser than One Foot in Eden (though it, to be sure, also had a witch of its very own). The difference is that the earlier novel is quiet, assured, and respectful of its audience's feelings, whereas Serena is balls-to-the-wall operatic from page 1.

He's the best writer working in and about the mountain South today, a geography I hate specifying since it will, in some readers' minds, limit his abilities and aspirations, as well putting him into a category they needn't bother with. So let's change that to: One of the five best novelists working today.

You have found surefire troll bait to go along with Camille Paglia and the articles about God that start so many roaring flame wars.