I am all for free expression and every anarcho-syndicalist commune can send their executive officer for the week and her comarades to any rally they want. God bless 'em.

However, the effect of that, is that many progressives (or even conservatives) who oppose the war don't want to participate. Our mothers told us that we would be judged by the company we keep and they were right.

So, before the scolds start telling us that asking for a march to be focused on one advertised topic is just doing the Man a favor by marginalizing those brave souls who want to free Mumia or defend the glorious nation of North Korea, maybe those scolds should think about it pragmatically.

I will never attend a mass march again because, without exception, every march I have attended in the past has been filled with off-topic causes. I didn't sign up for that and neither will most of the non-professional activists.

Cut off your noses to spite your faces and relish your ideological righteousness, but don't expect mass participation to follow. And no, 100K people is not mass participation. UM gets 120K in Ann Arbor eevery weekend for the noble cause of football, so what's 100K walking around a city when all the decision makers have gone away for the weekend?

Silent candle-lit vigils are all I will attend now since they're pretty and you don't have to listen to boring old Jane Fonda (or worse, Jane Fonda wannabes).

One poster asked: "What was the real story there? Certainly not that Jane Fonda and the other celebrities and fringe groups showed up to speak and try to be heard."

Well, I don't think it takes a media consultant to tell you that if you invite Jane Fonda to speak at a rally, then that is going to be the news story. If you invite Time Robbins and Susan Sarandon to speak, they will be the story. They were in fact invited to speak because it insures that it gets on TV. They certainly don't have anything particularly unique or insightful to say. They were there for their celebrity and then people complain that all that was noticed was their celebrity.

If the organizers wanted this to be about regular americans, then the only people who should have spoken should have been regular americans. They could have rounded up families of soldiers and airmen, veterans of the war (this war, not Vietnam), etc. Maybe a policy expert or a historian or someone with some knowledge about the topic, I don't know.

But they didn't let parents or experts speak. They put Hanoi Jane up there and then were shocked (shocked!) that the march was not universally embraced. If the point was to reach a broad swath of America, then putting up perhaps the most polarizing yet irrelevent figure in the country (Does any one really give a shit what Jane Fonda has to say? ) is certainly not the way to go. Jane can say anything she likes, but anyone with any connection to reality had to know that allowing her to speak meant that that was going to be the story.

How freaking dense do you have to be to misread the way TV works? Probably just dense enough to get hired by the democratic nominee who will then shoot himself/herself in the foot and doom us to 8 years of President Brownback or some such.

... what about the forged documents? Like the CBS Rathergate incident, we never seem to hear or even investigate who forged the documents in the first place. Isn't that really an important issue? Who wanted to convince the US to invade Iraq and therefore had an interest in forging those documents? There's a whole host of suspects, but we have not heard anything about it, have we?

In case you missed high school US history, "border states" refers to slave holding states which remained in the Union during the Civil War. The five border states are Delware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and West Virginia (which was actually just carved out of Virginia in 1863, so some count Virginia as the border state which divided.)

Border states frequently were divided ideologically and had residents fighting for both sides.

Ok, that's what all those brilliant Floridians for Nader said in 2000 and look what they helped bring about: a right wing cabal of epic proportions. All those people who supported Nader, even in states where it made no difference, are partly responsible for this mess and to claim otherwise is pure sophistry. I hope they can glory in their ideological purity while ignoring the realities of pragmatic governence and politics.

"Democrats, Republicans, there is no difference" -- really? would we be HERE if Gore had become president? NO. NO. A THOUSAND TIMES NO. So, honestly, shut up about how there "no difference."

Jesus, watch the hockey. It's great. Watch some basketball if you have to.

Writing about how there's nothing to write about is just boring. With all due respect, you phoned this one in King and it's beneath you.

The whole thing is a giant marketing scheme

Really? Advertisements and press coverage are part of marketing schemes? I never realized that before. If only the announcers could provide such depth and insight!

I feel like the scales have dropped from my eyes. I am so enlightened. I am now never going to watch televised spors again or participate in the commercial economy. I will sit on my lofty perch and scorn all those who are below me (that is, everyone).

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!