Wow. Such bile and passion in some of these letters. ncnGabriel, thank you for your post. Nicely done. Merelymortalmale, I appreciate your comments although I didn’t agree with everything.

There seems to be a lot of pissed off female Salon readers. Oh well. Fifteen years ago when I believed the things women said as opposed to what they really did, I would’ve cared. But now, I tend to agree with the peeps who are defending Mystery. The dude knows his subject matter. He should get a PhD in seduction. He’s devoted a good part of his adult life to studying the subject. It’s no less worthy of study than say, 18th century English lit. More fun, too.

Ladies, get over it. You’ve been exposed. There’s a guy out there who’s very good at playing your games (the ones you refuse to admit you play). Any woman who says she doesn’t play games is full of sh*t, or stupid, or both. You can label guys who understand (and exploit) this misogynist or whatever, but many are catching on.

For those who think that Mystery’s “tricks” only work on drunk bimbos—get real. Maybe that’s your way of feeling superior, but spare the rest of us the condescension. We all do the mating dance, regardless of intellectual ability. Actually, the smartest women are the best dancers. Too bad some are too self-involved or deluded to realize it.

Please view Palin's intro speech:

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/163813.html

She has the gravitas of McCain’s cute administrative assistant.

She's perky and folksy alright, in the same way that a contestant on a game show is. At 3:00 a.m. will she be ready for the next round of Family Feud?

Both McCain and she dredged up her PTA experience to shore up her credentials.

In the next few days, we can expect videos of her beauty pageant days uploaded on Youtube. We’ll see how she tackled the world’s most pressing problems while standing in a bathing suit. I’m sure she answered some super tough questions as a contestant.

Sorry Glen,

I agree with you 95% of the time, but not this time. Palin did not help herself or McCain last night. She was mean-spirited, vicious, venal, angry, arrogant, condescending, mocking, smug, and rude. She had zero stature or credibility to make the kind of personal attacks that she did, and I think it will backfire. She forgot that she was supposed to be addressing the American public, NOT the Repub delegates. They lapped up her bile, but most people will be turned off. I read other political blogs, not just the progressive ones. The reaction from most posters (not bloggers) have been overwhelmingly negative. Almost everyone who watched Palin's speech was turned off for all the reasons I listed above. Even W had the good sense to try to pass himself as a compassionate conservative. Yeah, it was a lie and some people bought it for a while, but the point is that he at least tried to appear decent. Palin didn't bother. She thought she sounded tough, but her sneering came off as cruel. She was channeling Cheney. Someone forgot to tell her Cheney's numbers are even lower than Bush's.

P.S. Yes, Biden's reaction to her speech was idiotic.

Glenn,

If your poll numbers are an accurate reflection of sentiment, I'm afraid the electorate of our country is more stupid than my wildest imagination. While I agree with your main point that Dems need to punch back hard at the Repub attack machine, I thought Palin's performance was obnoxious and over the top and most saw that. Apparently, Americans love trash talk as much as we claim to despise it.

Americans deserve the leaders they elect. Too bad the rest of us have to suffer, too.

If the electorate is too stupid to do a teensey weensey bit of critical appraisal on the positions of their political candidates and vote purely on personality, then yeah, they deserve the consequences of their choices. They deserve the fascist state our country has become. They deserve the health insurance companies ripping our eyeballs out. They deserve idiotic wars. They deserve their jobs being shipped overseas. They deserve our country being despised by the rest of the world. I could go on but you get my point.

Its pathetic, but we elect our president the same way we elect our high school student council, just on a larger more expensive scale. I came to that conclusion in 2000 and nothing since has changed my mind. Fortunately for the Dems this year, Obama is one of the most charismatic politician to appear in a long time. Obama's charisma and natural charm, and his powerful campaign operations have gotten him this far. Considering the political environment, however, he should be blowing out McCain, not just tying him.

Like I said, Glenn, I agree with you 95% of the time. I was hoping you're wrong on Palin, but maybe I'm the one who's deluded.

Propaganda works best in societies which don't know they are being propagandized, like ours. Most of the sheeple are under the illusion that the press will do its job of holding our government accountable. At the height of the Soviet Union, its primary propaganda tool was its state run media, specifically Pravda. However, Soviet propaganda was completely ineffective because its citizens knew they were being manipulated. They were skeptical of everything.

Not so in our country. Our government lies to us regularly, and the press happily foists these lies on us.

It's sad because the press is one of the few institutions which are given special protection in our Constitution. The founding fathers did this to ensure that the press has unfettered freedom to report on our government. The press has failed its function, irretrievably I'm afraid.

Our democracy's only hope is the internet. It is the only democratic source of information.