The continue reading link isn't working for me.

Great Episode. But somebody needs to call Sal!

If "a lot of people" miss the humor in "Brüno," maybe it isn't there.

I have just read a press release that claims Sacha Baron Cohen, not Brüno, actually feared for his life after a crowd in Arkansas went wild and displayed the very caveman-like behavior toward the idea of two men kissing that Cohen had so graciously come to Arkansas to expose. The event is a cage fight (which has replaced quilting as Arkansas' favorite pastime). The report is from the Brüno movie website:

"Seconds after the kiss, attendees became furious. Soon after, one member of the crowd unwired a chair and threw it at Baron Cohen’s head. At that point, it was a near riot and the performers were rushed from the premises. Audience members and other fighters alike were screaming epithets and surrounding the bus and the field team. It ended after a stand off that lasted many hours, with 40 police officers from the Fort Smith division helping to rescue the cast and crew and quell the angry mob."

Presmably, after being escorted from the event by 40 police officers, Cohen congratulated himself on his bravery and denounced Satan worship in West Virginia as well.

But Bruno is now synonymous with gay. The two words are forever linked. Be that on your head, Sacha Baron Cohen. Meanwhile, the man himself escapes behind a caricature--the fiction that is the driving force behind his "documentary." I have not seen the film, but I've seen clips, and I've seen Borat--Bruno will try his P.T. Barnum-best to get the mullets to humiliate themselves, and the mullets will do their best to indulge his (and the camera's) lunacy. Who do you think will come out smelling better?

Aren't our soldiers federal employees? How are they supposed to collect their benefits, by telling?

Why has no one in the mainstream press reported on the history-making dive by out athlete Matthew Mitcham that took the gold in the closing hours of the Olympics? Why does the sight of Usain Bolt's chest-pounding make news, and not Mitcham's hug from his partner, Lachlan Fletcher? Does it, perhaps, not fit into the uber-macho script journalists have been typing about the Olympics, and athletes in general? Mitcham didn't chest pound or war-whoop, but his gentle victory should be an inspiration to us all.

There goes the election. Obama's first big decision, and he blows it--big time. I'll still be voting for the idiot, but it's going to be McCain/Anybody in 2008.

"Yes, the right wing is obviously trying to paint Obama as a Muslim terrorist sympathizer -- it's the only card they have to play."

Au contraire, mon ami. The right wing always have their secret weapon, to be deployed whenever all else fails: the so-called "liberal press." Trust them to shoot themselves (and the liberal candidate) in the foot every time. As Janis Ian once said, "If your enemies don't get you, your friends will know how."

Barack Obama may well turn out to be our first Black president. BO is many things; however, why does your headline writer insist upon calling him "young"? If he takes office at age 48, he will be just three years short of 51, which was my age when I had a heart attack. If he's "young," what do you call someone who's 18, 28, 38? Barack Obama is middle-aged; there is no getting around this. According to Webster's, mid-age starts at 45. And it's nothing to be ashamed about. So much has been made of Obama's inexperience, at a relatively "ripe" age, that you'd think his supporters would prefer to downplay the age factor. Not that youth is always a bad thing. There have been younger presidents in my own lifetime: John Kennedy, Bill Clinton. These "young" men were at least as competent as their eleders: Nixon, Reagan, Bush, etc. In your enthusiasm to hand Obama the keys to the White House, you don't seem to realize that the lily does not need gilding. Obama's accomplishments have already put him in the history books. Why are you trying to put him in a nursery?

It's more understandable than being a sore winner.

Clinton is better out of the race. What an incredibly ugly electoral system we have in America. Your headline says it all: it's never enough to just win, first you have to bury your opponent, then pour gasoline on her, and then light a match. Politics is a variant form of indecent exposure: You sell your soul for votes to a bunch of backwater yokels in the primary states, then you gather dirt on your opponents while making campaign promises you know you can't keep, and then you denounce a friend of long-standing in a public forum, just to show the punters you'd bleed for them if necessary. It's ugly, and I think Hillary should get out while she still has a character left to salvage. It's too late for the other guy.

I don't know what everybody's so upset about. If Obama showed up for church as often as he showed up for votes in the Senate, that means he barely registered as a parishioner in Wright's church at all. Ergo, he can't be held responsible for Wright's rants.