Paglia and Clinton are two sides of the same coin: ardent self-promoters only concerned with themselves. Hillary tries to triangulate her way to power, while Camille mistakes contrariness for intellectual depth. The world would be better off if they both crawled back under the respective rocks.

For example, Paglia writes: "Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding."

This is absurd truism is simply accepted rather than investigated. Which part of the Democratic/leftist spectrum was The Times playing to in its daily glaring headlines reporting Whitewater/Lewinsky inuendo as fact? How about during its Judith Miller march of wooden soldiers to Iraq? Those darned lefties!

And as for the old canard that 98 percent of humanities professors are Democrats, this is simply ridiculous. It wasn't even true in the 1970s (where both Clinton and Paglia reside intellectually) and it is certainly not true in the 21st century. I am a humanities professor who was a registered Republican for years until I was too ashamed to be in the same tent as Bush/Cheney/flat-earthers of the religious right and switched to the Libertarian party. Do I have left-leaning colleagues? of course. Probably 2-1, but among people who got the PhD's after 1995, I bet it is closer to 50-50 / left-right. I love chiding my older colleagues about their New Left activism and have never suffered an iota of discrimination because of poliitical views. Hell, more than 2% of them are Greens who voted Bush into office by supporting Nader Quixote.

My problem with this old trope is that even if it were true, it's meaningless. Tell me, what visible effect has this supposedly leftist fifth column in American society had? It's been over thirty years that the right has been crying about this and, where pray tell, has it had ANY EFFECT WHATSOEVER? Has the country moved to the left because its elites have been educated by these professors? Of course not. The political leanings of the humanitiies (of all things!) professorate is irrelevant.

Half of the students aren't listening and of the half that are, most couldn't figure out a professor's views any way. If I criticized Bush for pandering to the unions and imposing steel tariffs thus harming free trade and the progress of globalization, all my students would hear is that I am criticizing the President and therefore I must be a leftist professor/Democrat.

This is what happens after a lifetime of inane journalism in which putting a quotation from each side is mistaken for objectivity and yelling more loudly than your opponent makes you a better debater.

If I want horse-race reporting, I can get it from a dozen different Washington "Insider" tv shows, websites and the NYT/WaPo.

I would love to see Salon change the tone of election campaign coverage completely. I'm just brainstorming here, but what the hell, maybe you could discuss the ISSUES and QUALIFICATIONS.

I don't care yet whether they can raise money. I care whether they have ideas which are worth supporting (with, inter alia, money).

If there was nothing wrong or underhanded or untoward about it, why did they deny it and try to cover it up?

It could have gone like this: "were these firings political?"

Alberto Gonzales: "Yes, in the sense that these attorneys were not carrying out the policy objectives of the President and therefore have been asked to resign."

But it didn't go like that. It was lie upon lie upon cover-up. If the lie wasn't necessary, then why do it? Either this administration's first reaction is to lie as some imaginary defense of executive power which is beyond scrutiny, or they were trying to hide something they knew was shady.

Pick one if you like, but it looks bad either way.

I want to strongly object to the previous poster's suggestion that there should be hearings demanding that media companies be legally bound to balance right wing talk radio with progressive talk radio.

NO NO NO.

First of all, the last thing we need is more government interference with the media. This is the tactic of the increasingly disappointing and authoritarian Huga Chavez and is the road to dictatorship.

Second, it is impractical. What would the outcome be? Media outlets which wanted to push a right wing agenda would simply hire horrible representatives of the left -- what would say Ward Churchill or Noam Chomsky or a retired Joe Biden say with three hours of airtime to fill a day?

This idea is as bad as the right wing red herring ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS which wants to reconfigure that dastardly leftwing professorate by hiring certfiied rightwingers.

A free and independent media is the bedrock of democracy. That free and independent media cannot be created by government fiat.

I am with the people who say that to remove 'tar baby' or 'niggardly' from our lexicon because some uneducated people think they sound like racist terms is sinking to the lowest common denominator.

Has anyone every called a black person a tarbaby, of course. But if McCain were using it in that fashion would the sentence make any sense? Try substituting the 'n word' in the sentence. Does it make sense? No.

Ergo he obviously wasn't using it in a racial slur way. Let's keep our eye on the ball here and focus on issues and not stupid gotcha moments that make the left seem silly and out of touch.