King,

I've always felt that the PED scandal was the result of 2 factors: sportswriters suffering from guilt that they ignored the issue for so long and secondly because it began to involve Barry Bonds, a man almost universally loathed by the typing class.

King, please write about this issue more. Help us understand if there is a difference between use and abuse of these drugs. Help fans understand how the testing process works. If Radomski names names and names drugs, help us understand what those drugs do. Did taking the drugs make that player better? Why is that substance banned.

I would like to learn something about PED usage beyond the hand-wringing, guilt-tripping, axe grinding screeds of most sportswriters. You are pretty good at this, i think. So have at it.

I think what King is referring to with the Buster Douglas comment is the way that Douglas, after become a wealthy man with endorsements, his own video game, and the purse for a title defense (est. $24.6MM) wanted no part of actually defending the title he won over Mike Tyson.

Keith Olbermann absolutely is a lefty version of Bill O'Reilly. He has a different style but the substance is the same - shrill opinions gilded with a veneer of reportage. When Olbermann has a recurring segment called "Worst Person in the World" how can you call him anything but a commentator?

Since the point of the article was that the boundaries between journalism and opinion commentary are blurring - particularly on television. In an increasingly polarized country (or at least an increasingly polarized political class), it makes perfect sense to look into the two of the more examples.

Only the hopelessly biased can't see the aptness of the comparison.

I have to agree that this is an inappropriate piece - as is Alan Wolfe's. The man died, and Salon mocks something he said by taking it out of context. In a more serious piece, Salon sums up Jerry Falwell only as a hateful demagogue kept alive by Fox News and Falwell's own cable show (as if Fox is the sole practitioner of the adversarial pundit interview).

I don't know a lot about Jerry Falwell, but I know he was a human being. Judging him as a "hateful person" based upon a few interviews and out of context comments is just the sort of thing many more liberal people bristle at when applied to their heroes. Its the sort of thing one might have accused Falwell of doing.

The grave-dancing is just a poisonous to political debate as any "hateful" pontificating.

Glenn,

I wonder what you feel your role is here with this blog. I lean conservative, though I am very skeptical of the current administration's handling of many things, so I don't read a lot of Salon. I come for the sports column, which is quite good, but I can't stand most of the political commentary. The reason I dislike the commentary is because it is not geared at informing but merely in debating. Your blog is a good example.

I am genuinely confused about Plame's status with CIA and I think there is both left and right wing hyperbole going on. If I am to simplify here: left wing commentators decry Plame's outing as traitorous act that put an active CIA agent in danger while right wing commentators say she held an unimportant desk job. I think both statements contain some truth but also grossly overstate things.

It may be true that Plame was "covert" but it isn't clear that she was ever in any actual danger. The CIA may have been trying to keep her status a secret because it would aid in information gathering, not because if she was a known employee of the CIA it would have put her in danger. I think what the Fox News people you cite are really saying is something like "she may technically have been covert, but she wasn't Sidney Bristow trying to stop terrorist plots."

I still think there is some validity in that. Maybe I am wrong, but the way to argue the point is not to trot out a blurb from a CIA file and say "ha! look at all these lying liars!" I would like to see a description of what she was doing, how important it was and how it may have been impacted by her exposure.

The tactic you are taking makes you know better than folks you are criticizing - your ultimate goal is not to inform but merely lead the debate an earn accolades from people who already agree with you.

I really don't get the vitriol directed at this article and its author. If I gather Dickerson's point correctly, she is merely pointing out that replacing one unhealthy beauty standard (anorexically thin) with another (unhealthily fat) is not advancement.

In making this point, she deliberately makes a distinction between merely healthy yet full-figured and obese. Jordin Sparks, the daughter of an NFL pro, is full-figured. Lakisha Jones is obese. Did other people miss that part?

There is a difference between healthy acceptance of your body type and a deluded contentment to remain unhealthy. As otherlisa pointed out, the problem with Buffie the Body is that in order to attain and maintain her current body type, she eats junk food and eschews exercise.

The letter-writer "loula" says she has a secret: that most people are not lazy slobs fat because of their own lack of motivation. Loula, you need a new little birdie because many studies on the eating habits show that too many Americans eat too much and do not exercise enough. According to Epocrates, medical technology company, only 13% of physicicans believed that genetics was significant reason their patients were overweight. Physicians surveyed believed portion control and nutrition were more common reasons for obesity.

One small correction: Ruben Studdard may have lost 100lbs at one point, but he put that back on. He is now as heavy as ever.