Reporter watches a lot of television. Tells us who we can vote for. I, for one, don't appreciate being told who I can vote for by a weak and manipulating media.

Walter's bio reads like the embedded beltway media whore that he is. From his bio over at the tabloid usatoday.com:

"...Walter Shapiro biography

Walter Shapiro began writing his twice weekly 'Hype & Glory' column for USA TODAY in the fall of 1995. For most of the prior two decades, Shapiro was a magazine staff writer and correspondent.

During the first four years of the Clinton administration, Shapiro served as Esquires's political voice in Washington, creating the monthly "Our Man in the White House" column which covered the president and politics.

From 1987-93, Shapiro was a senior writer for Time specializing in government and politics and also was the magazine's correspondent covering the 1992 Clinton campaign. At Newsweek (1983-87), he served as a political writer. In the early 1980s, Shapiro was a reporter for The Washington Post, primarily writing for that newspaper's Sunday magazine. He was previously an editor of the Washington Monthly (1972-76). Shapiro's first job in journalism was as a Washington reporter for Congressional Quarterly (1969-70).

Political full disclosure: Shapiro served in the Carter administration as a presidential speechwriter (1979) and as press secretary (1977-78) to Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall. In 1972, as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Shapiro sought the Democratic nomination for a U.S. House seat and finished second in a six-way primary. Since 1979, his only partisan activity has been voting.

Born in New York City, Shapiro grew up in Norwalk, Conn., where he graduated from Brien McMahon High School in 1965. He received a B.A. in history from the University of Michigan in 1970; he also did post-graduate work there in European history. .."

"...and the skill with which Siegel deploys his pen."

Holy shit Lee. You'd have thought you'd learn your lesson the first time. It's like crack isn't it Lee. Maybe one day in the future we'll hand each other key fobs and ask each other if we are "friends of Lee."

We keep looking to the source of the problem for the solution. Plugging your car into "the grid" is not the best we can do. Energy companies, automobile companies will only develop a solution that requires the consumption of a resource they own. They will never R&D a car that runs on free solar, or wind power, or wave generation power. These batteries that they put in all these prototypes are toxic. We need cars that last for a century, not 5 years.

I want a car I can plug into my solar array. One that I don't have to register, get a license to drive it, and I don't have to insure. Then I'll be free.

Journalists can be a "herd of independent minds" all day long, but they don't decide what runs.

There is just one person who decides what runs on the front page of the New York Times. If it does run, then most newspapers follow suit. If the editor at the A.P. puts something on the wire, it automatically syndicates to thousands of news outlets. There are not that many people at the tops of these pyramids and they do collectively decide the agenda. This small group is a pretty chummy bunch. If the media has a "mind" it is this small group of decision makers who decide the national media agenda daily.

Mark is the inverse of the lazy reporter whom we all complain the "media" has become. He's out there doing the work, and it is paying off. When it doesn't pay off, let's pass on the non article and just pull up the bootstraps and try again. In the future if you need to construct a non article write a treatise on how to file a freedom of information act. The citizens know little about how reporters do what they do, and that information would be useful.

Salon,

Please continue to pay for Mark's airplane tickets, rental cars, expense accounts, and if he follows a bad lead ...purchase his non article for the usual amount but please don't feel compelled to print it.

This letter writer contradicts himself in so many ways he lacks credibility. The letterwriter claims he got his GED, and then claims the admissions director of a state school needed his high school transcript. Wrong. State schools have to admit you with a GED. He also suggests that his high school refused to release his transcripts out of spite. Please.

He also suggest that his new freedom to learn involved exposure to "communism and macro-economics and Zen Buddhism and linguistics and history and race and culture" and suggests that Catholic schools avoid those subjects. I call bullshit on that. I attended Catholic schools. They teach all of the above and then some.

His continual references to Catholic High School as being the crux of everything bad, suggests this letter is more about the assumed subtext of negative anti catholicism, than about his supposed self esteem issue. And you all bought it hook, line and sinker. Ask yourselves why?

I was going to read this article. I was rudely interrupted by an advertisement that pushed the article out of the way. A new intrusive advertising trick. I like to think I have control over my internet experience. I don't like ads that take control over my browser and the page. If I see more of this kind of thing, I'm gone for good. Pass this on your "let's see how far we can fuck with our readers before they flee en masse division."

The writers here should be up in arms about ads that literally push their articles out of the way.

I never thought I would see a Salon news item start with this line... "A couple of sources, including the Drudge Report..."

How about signing all your future posts with this byline:

Alex Koppelman ...blogger who considers the Drudge Report to be a source.