It will take years to undo the damage Bush (& Cheney) have done. He will leave us with greater weakness in our military and our economy than when he came to power.

The hatred of Bush has none of the joyous zeal that characterized the hatred of Clinton by the wingnuts. It will be a relief when he departs. Most of us will want him to go back to his insular existence in Texas so that we can forget about him. Sadly, we will not be able to escape his erosion of democracy and civil liberties and we will probably discover that things were even worse than we have come to know. Part of the appeal of an Obama or even an Edwards (as opposed to Hillary) is the promise of someone who is uplifting and will help us from being beaten down by the residual anger and wreckage of Bush's disastrous reign.

I'm trained as a mental health professional and the mental health system sees perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse. My first experience with a pedophile patient was an Episcopal priest. Protestant denominations do not have the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, but the decentralized nature of these denominations may make it even easier for abusers to stay in the system and I would guess that elders and deacons feel compelled to hush up allegations of wrong doing and happily foist predators on other churches. Denominations to have some authority they can exercise and the Southern Baptist Convention are happy to discipline over churches that admit gays or do other things that displease those in authority. Celibacy creates its own unique problems, but a common problem with most religious denominations (Christian or otherwise) is that they recruit young, normally rather unworldly people into the seminary and then turn around and give them great moral authority (and ample opportunities to compartmentalize and rationalize their problems). That is a recipe for all kinds of "giving in to temptation" and the nature of churches and the middle class respectability that's part of church membership means that that the laiety keeps a lot of things quiet. Catholic, Protestant, Fundie, evangelical, unitarian, druid, whatevr--I suspect that this is a problem and poorly dealt with throughout the religious spectrum.

The article is clearly a pretty muddled stream of consciousness. What is clear is that Sanchez likes attention and he certainly has the potential to find 15 minutes of fame in some other venue (reality tv perhaps, porn and felonies seem the most popular life histories). Interestingly, the porn is mentioned rather than the sex work. For now, Matt seems to be enjoying his role as whore for the Right. He might not like it if the Reserves dump him or the wingnuts find a new plaything. The comment about Gannon is funny because there was so much to that story. Maybe Matt will have time to review it once his award is his only souvenir of his wingnut life.

Matt isn't the only hypocrite here, btw. The award he received was named for a neocon who disagreed with the Iraq War and was starting to catch flak from her former friends when she died. So much for her academic freedom.

The Eagles, but not their musical forebearers (Buffalo Soingfield [Buffalo Springfield Again, in particular], the Byrds [Mr. Tambourine Man or Sweethart of the Rodeo]) or their more talented contemporary, Jackson Browne (The Pretender or earlier).

The overplayed Led Zeppelin, but not the good stuff (the first two albums). The mediocre REM, but not the early LPs?

The obvious Dylan, but none of the other folkies or sing-songwriters...

And the wrong Zappa. How about "Absolutely Free"?

Only a few sleepers like Steely Dan's Aja, which wears as well now as it did 25+ years ago.

None of the early Motown or seminal R&B acts.

I could on......

It's funny that all this blather usually comes from pasty-faced fat guys with bad combovers. That doesn't exactly scream "macho" to me. Instead, they're the characters who remind you of that blowhard uncle or cousin who has an opinion about everything, but never gets off their fat butt to actually do anything. These guys aren't even real bullies--they can't get from their chair to the refrigerator without heezing. Basically they're the boors we remember from family reunions. The more canny relatives usually avoid talking to these characters or simply get to the point about them (i.e., call them on their all talk, no action). I'd like to see the Dems or the left ask these guys when they're going go do something macho rather than open another bag of cheetos.

We'll probably get even more stores like this. Basically, Bush is managed in the same way as a laggard salesman at a Buick dealership. Lots of pep talks, not much education. It's why car salesmen usually can't remember the horsepower of cars they sell everyday and it's why we're stuck with the unworkable policies of this administration.

In the past, Paglia generated a lot of hits to the site---that. She's a known (if too well known) quantity and she revels in controversy. Unfortunately, as Glenn notes, the years have made her version of controversy much staler. I wouldn't be surprised to see her go, if she doesn't help build traffic to the site.

Journalists love anecdotes. They are absolutely bhorrible at statistics and in making sense of complicated sentiments. they also figure their readres are even more cluless. Sadly, reearchers are quite stupid about how research information is used by the media and don't balance research with interpretation for a lay audience. Bottom line, nice vivid anecdotes (the kind easily remembered and often very distoring) get press where the mundane facts (even when they represent the overwhelming state of popular sentiment or scientific fact) get ignored. And it's not just hacks like Barone--BTW what happened to him? 15 years ago, he was a middle of the roader who could sometimes do some decent analysis.