Okay, we all knew she was a flack from the administration when she did a second mash note about how the President runs meetings like clockwork--this, after it had been already been revealed that his cabinet meetings were all show and no substance.

But using the word "subtle" in any connection to this President is a new low. As is quoting someone who says he "philosphically understands" why people come to the US. Really? Must be the Ivy Leaugue education that helped him probe such a deep and mysterious question to its depths.

The good thing about reading the NYT on-line as opposed to having it in my home is reduced exposure to her Rove-blessed blather.

This is the clearest, smartest, most substantial review of what went wrong with Desperate Housewives. Bravo, Heather!

DH is unique among recent series in that it ran off the rails so quickly. Usually it takes a few years for stupidity to set in and cockiness to rule the writers' roost.

I started watching the first season when a novelist friend said, "The dialogue is great." As a novelist, I was piqued, and found the dialogue was quite good even when the plots were weak. Gradually, though, people started acting in ways that seemed so cartoonish they were unbelievable, and what they did seemed unrooted both in their character and the story. Like Bree's son talking about his mother having sex and imitating her moans. What teenage kid can bear to think of his parents having sex, let alone talk about it? Then the evil pharmacist starts ordering the kid--in someone else's house? Not remotely believable even if it was meant to be pathetic. Or Lynette bringing her baby to work, handing the infant off to someone else who was about to let it fall off a desk. Puh-leeze. It didn't work as farce, it didn't work as comedy, it just plain didn't work.

I got bored as the characters were treated by the wriers like puppets.

Sex and the City had its fair share of bad shows, and the last year was one year too many, but it had more style, more savvy, and the women seemed more connected to reality (however upscale and sometimes outré) and each other, not to mention psychological reality.

Dear Andrew:

Did Karl Rove's office help you subtly craft your review? It was lovingly full of re-cycled bullshit about Gore the Bore, damning with faint praise. After all this time, can you still believe these RNC spin points? And still focus on the personal as more important than the political? So what if Gore is portly? I'd take that over our current president's physical fitness any day.

How can you let your good journalism be corrupted by such trivialities? Shame on you.

This one is particularly irksome: "remember, he was mostly raised in a Washington hotel suite." You are dead wrong and should publish a retraction today. As many investigators have proven, he grew up in an apartment building that only later became a posh hotel:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/h101999_1.shtml

And he spent his summers working on a farm in Tennessee. Unless you're a Henry Higgins-type linguist, I defy you to prove his accent is a put-on.

Mad as hell about the recycled RNC spin points about Gore?

Don't just post a comment here where it might be ignored.

Write to the CEO, to Joan Walsh, to the Arts and Entertainment editor and anyone else in editorial who you think should know what shoddy journalism this piece is.

Here's the staff listing page (which takes a bit of hunting to find):

http://www.salon.com/about/staff/index.html

So Poco, there's no truth to global warming? It's all just politics?

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess Bush is right.

If this recycled crap offended you, make sure you cc your letter to salon to the author as well:

aoh@salon.com

Here's the author's reply to my complaint which is some pages below and which I sent to him as well:

<<"Goodness. What more do I have to say? That he is, in fact, the second coming of Jesus Christ? I thought it was a rave review. For the record, the phrase he uses in the film (I quote from memory) is, "I spent eight months a year in a small hotel apartment." And there's a black-and-white snap of the place, which looks pretty much like a hotel. What about that is problematic?">>

Okay, let's unpack this defense. I never said in my letter that Gore was blameless or perfect or anything like that. So O'Hehir starts with a gross distortion of my complaint. A dramatic phrase on his part, but mendacious argumentation.

Then, hey, he gave the film a rave, so I guess that's meant to diffuse any unjust and dishonest criticism of Gore, any regurgitation of RNC spin points from the 2000 campaign. I should just back off, right? What more can I possibly want? The truth? Goodness.

Next he blurs the whole question of where Gore lived. Saying "he was mostly raised in a

Washington hotel suite" implies a life of luxury and room service, not remotely the images called up when you say the words "a small hotel apartment." And as Googling will amply show, the charge of his luxe lifestyle and thus phoniness was mounted by the RNC spinmeisters and repeated ad nauseum by the MSM.

O'Hehir also says nothing about my calling him out about Gore's accent.

I expected better. I expected honesty.

For the record, I think Gore ran a lousy campaign, hampered by image makers and his own anger at Clinton and unwillingness to use Clinton. But far more damaging than all of that was the constant drumbeat of Gore-bashing that is starting up again, even at salon.com.

I'm an author or co-author of 17 books and hundreds of reviews, essays and articles and I often find salon.com inspiring and illuminating. Hell, I interviewed Laura Miller on my radio show. But this "review" is deeply dispiriting.

Dear Joan:

I take great exception to this comment of yours:

<<and the level of paranoia in this letters thread is a little disturbing.>.

You are totally misreading and mischaracterizing honest disappointment and even anger that a salon.com writer would have so deeply internalized the 2000-era MSM gripes about Al Gore that he can't even see or admit his lack of objectivity.

Andrew O'Hehir did not remotely say that Gore's accent changes from place to place, as many people's accents do. He called it "put-on" and by falsely linking it to an image of Gore living in hotel luxury growing up, clearly implied he was a phony.

The groundswell from readers like me is appropriate and necessary. I don't care that the review of his film is a rave--that isn't what people are talking about. They'rea talking about received "wisdom" substituting for analysis and truth.