balitwilight, I put "exciting" in quotes because it was a direct quote from Carlin. Thanks for your contribution!

Larry King just did a great George Carlin appreciation -- clips of his appearances on the show, but also Lewis Black, Bill Maher, Roseanne Barr and Jerry Seinfeld just looking stricken at his loss, especially Black. It was very moving. Also, his brother Patrick and daughter Kelly called in; if you've ever thought a professional curmudgeon and shit-stirrer might have to be a little bit of an asshole personally, well, it doesn't sound like it. Watch it if CNN reruns it this weekend. Of course what I saw that I'd never gotten before was this funny but mainstream Irish Catholic comic my parents loved changing into this rebel mid-way through my childhood -- and, kind of amazingly, my mainstream Irish Catholic parents going along with him, to the point of dragging three kids to see him in Milwaukee at Summerfest. They were awfully cool in ways I never give them enough credit for.

weeping, you are channelling your inner George Carlin!

Sorry, I just blogged about both Carlin, again, as well as Erin's great piece, and also the terrific Schaller roundtable on swing states. We have a great issue today.

weeping, as you know, I've given this a lot of thought. Do you have ideas for what I/we might do? Clearly, it's not everywhere (my Carlin thread today was great, and it included some people who can get...obstreperous on other topics). It's mainly Obama/Clinton threads, but also gender issues, generally. I welcome all thoughtful suggestions.

Thanks for the memories, JT Gulls. Yes, the staff at "Race for the White House" was hugely impressed I knew what goo-goo meant! How can anyone not know that, I thought. And Brooks also called Obama "Fast Eddie" in that column -- isn't that what they called Vrdolyak? Without having lived in Chicago, you really can't understand the dynamics of this presidential race and never heard "Council Wars."

softdog, I promise to engage in self-reflection, if you'll promise to join me. weeping, I think you're great, but every once in a while you go a little passive-aggressive on me. Rebecca got loony letters because she wrote poorly? Perhaps her essay didn't have "productive value" and shouldn't have even been written? In other words, she asked for the loony letters? I don't think so. You and I happen to disagree about the role sexism played in Hillary Clinton's defeat. That's OK, we can disagree. But somehow you want to be the arbiter of which essays and which ideas have "productive value."

By the way, there are some crazy letters on Erin Aubry Kaplan's piece, too, which I gather you think was worthy of being written. Does she deserve that? Did she write poorly? I gather your Carlin reference in this thread was a reference to my joke about your going off in the Aubry Kaplan thread. Was it Erin's fault that you went off in that thread? Or the pro-Clinton letter writers' fault? Or was it maybe your own doing? It's OK, we all go off sometimes. But we don't have to blame other people when we do it.

Thanks for the dialogue.

Thanks, weeping. We'll figure it out. Really.

softdog, I do seriously want your input, so thanks. The thing is, we deliberately commissioned two articles that came at the issue of Clinton voters in a different way. The fact that people didn't necessarily see the balance, or even notice the other, is hard to control for -- we linked them in the cover box, and even in the skybox (which we don't normally do!) And yes, we had Clinton lovers angry we assigned Walter's piece, and Obama lovers angry we were still paying attention to Clinton voters! I don't know what more we could have done to balance, beyond having Walter and Rebecca take turns writing paragraphs in one piece. But then again, we're getting letters asking what happened to Cary Tennis even though we have a notice on our cover that he's on vacation until July 1. People don't see what they don't see.

And Amity, thanks for your thoughts. I particularly like the idea of occasionally seeing the letters of people you've chosen not to see! If only we could get our developers to figure that one out!

Oy, I'm disappointed in myself, JT, but I decided not to Google Darth Vrdolyak and Fast Eddie; I should have remembered Fast Eddie Burke! Thank you for these Chicago memories. Volunteering for Harold Washington in 1983 is probably still the high point of my political life. I'd give anything to hear him talk about the Obama campaign.

Someone let us know what this thread had become, so we're going to shut it down. Thanks, Publicola, for doing battle with awful people from both sides of the debate. Thanks also, SusanGSMcGee. Thanks, Villemar, for representing just the way you always do! So admirable.

I won't call out the remarkable new posters on both sides for their stellar contributions; if they come back, we'll recognize them then.

Thanks to those who gave me a heads up on the Clinton voters thread; I just closed it. That's real filth. Thanks to those who tried to clean it up.

weeping, I know you've posted your email before on these threads, but I can't find it; will you email me at jwalsh "at" salon.com so we can continue our discussion?

Hi, salonmarte. Your post definitely showed up this time! Sorry you were having trouble. I like your idea, I think people should focus on what they CAN do, and not merely venting.