Funny, well written letter...and I know whereof you speak because I lived in one of those idyllic little New Hampshire towns for about 10 years. But you undercut your own case because yes you do live in a pretty homogenous town of 301 and you do spend a lot of your time in the wholesome activities of raising children and raking leaves. But here's the thing, because your life is so effing remote from the lives of all the people you denigrate for their experience with and activism against racism means you don't have a frickin' clue about what they're talking about. And access to the Internet, talk radio, and FOX news doesn't make it otherwise.

Joan, if you get called on cable to discuss this this week (and I'm guessing the call has already come in), and some inside the beltway tool (oh like Tina Brown or Bob Woodward) jumps in (as they did on Morning Joe today) to breathe more life into the meme that this virulence comes from both the right and the left, would please call a time out and ask whoever is there on the panel with you to name just one legitimately leftwing attack (legitimate meaning identifiable with elected liberal politicians and commentators rather than ANSWER or Code PInk) that rises to the level (rather sinks to the level) of the Vince Foster murder movement or the birther/death panel conspiracies.

This is O'Reilly doing Colbert's Formidable Opponent bit

The confusion expressed in the public opinion polls is exactly what one should expect from the temporizing, equivocating, mollifying governing approach Obama has taken since assuming office. Okay, so they read the polls that folks were tired of the constant political wars in Washington and the focus groups who told them how much they loved bipartisanship, and they nobly decided to move forward and bring as many elements of the country with them as possible--the military, Wall Street, the Republicans, the independents, the CIA, the progressives, the gun nuts, the Jesus freaks, the home gardeners and the meat-eaters. Great. Nice try. But it isn't working. It's burning up valuable time corralling cats. Eight years of rogue capitalism, constitutional abuses, military miscalculations, intelligence failures, and political game-playing should have been enough, but the president needed another eight months to see for himself. Hopefully he's seen enough, and from here on out we'll see him tap into the growing national rage against military and corporate adventurism and begin to channel it toward a creating a more responsive and accountable government...kinda like the one he promised as a candidate.

It would be illiberal of me to pass judgment before reading, but this strikes me as ominous:

"African-American writer Ishmael Reed proffers a rowdy, score-settling weigh-in on 'Huckleberry Finn'

Would that be like feminist writer Andrea Dworkin proffers a rowdy, score-settling weigh-in on Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon?

Or conservative theorist Sean Hannity proffers a rowdy, score-settling weigh-in on The New Deal?

How much of my understanding of contemporary American culture suffers by my refusal to watch Glenn Beck or read anything about him?

I just read that your in-house nutbag Camille endorsed the birther movement on NPR today. If this is not the straw that breaks the back of your irrational support for this thoroughly unhinged maniac, nothing will. May God save Salon from your liberal vanity.

Re: "Burns employs one of the most overused character-cheat devices -- the internal monologue, heard as voiceover narration -- to frequently hilarious effect."

Grrr. Having toyed around with a screenwriting career in Hollywood, I know that internal monologue heard as voiceover narration is one of the most overused producer-cheat devices known to writers. In their never-ending desperate attempt to control the creative process, which they barely understand, Hollywood producers and their minions in the story editing departments love to point to "No internal monologue as voiceover narration" as one of their foremost cider house rules. It's as arbitrary as b.s. goes of course. There isn't an aesthetic or marketing assessment anywhere that suggests in any way that "internal monologue heard as voiceover narration" harms the quality or commercial success of a film. In fact a list of films that do that very thing--right off the top of my head--suggests the opposite:

A Christmas Story

Goodfellas

Stand By Me

Usual Suspects

Snatch

Year of Living Dangerously

Blade Runner

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Shawshank Redemption

Moulin Rouge

It's a knee-jerk and thoroughly superficial critique of screenwriting that serves no one but story editors, film school instructors and movie critics with a handy default fault they can hang their pointy little hats on. I'd say that any writer who employs a device to "frequently hilarious effect" should not be chided for engaging in cheap character development tricks.

When Obama instructs Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate him.

We're tumbling down the rabbit hole with alacrity, folks.

Re: "The remark is going to make it at least a little bit harder for those complaining that Obama is some rabid race warrior trying to impose a New Black Order on the country."

Really, Tom? Really? If you think bigotry is trumped by authenticity, then you don't know shit about bigotry, man.

Seems like every other week here at Salon, we're debating whether "we" should be forgiving someone (Michael Vick, Joe Wilson, Serena, etc). From the various comments it seems "we" really can't reach a consensus on forgiving anyone, so maybe we should just dissolve "our" Council on Forgiveness Dispensation, and go back to the freewheeling days of yesteryear when we were free to simply damn the behavior of people we hate and accept the behavior of people we like.