I thought that Heather Havrilesky, the self-absorbed, contemptuous snob that "reviews" TV for Salon was the worst the publication could hold. Until I read this.

I don't have quite the contempt some people have shown for Ms. Dickerson, since this is the first piece I've read from her within memory. But it is bad, indeed.

It IS possible to have great hatred for O.J. Simpson. And, buried within the spazzing prose of her article, Dickerson said the reason why. Simpson became the nexus of all the beliefs about black and white relations in America, and his tawdry tale showed the flimsiness and gauze-like vulnerability of our belief in a "colorblind society."

Bill Maher once illustrated the F. Scott Fitzgerald proposition that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” Maher's illustration was: "O.J. Simpson DID kill his wife, and the LAPD ARE racists." And the proof of the racial divide in America is that most blacks only believe the latter, and most whites only believe the former.

The complaint I have is that Dickerson didn't explicate this. All she did was vent. Perhaps she wishes Simpson and his murders didn't exist. Why? Would she care to remain unaware that there are blacks who still hold furious hatred for whites? Or is she bothered that hatred of Simpson's escape from justice has helped sustain white racism? Or is there something else? I couldn't tell from her writing, because it was so haphazard and thoughtless.

Does she bless Judith Regan? Or damn her? Does she associate Howard Stern with evil? Why is she making assumptions about Regan based on one or two articles?

I think it's time for a hockey match. Put Dickerson against Havrilesky in a full-contact, no-holds-barred, steel-cage hockey match. Let's make it like that beloved Japanese folk story, "Battle Royale," where they fight each other until one of them dies. The winner/survivor gets to write for Salon if she hasn't had her hands cut off. And at this point, I'd still root for Dickerson, because I think she has the potential for learning how to write, where Havrilesky doesn't.

...sure, we'd make all our own cards. But since I draw like a retarded third-grader drawing backwards in a mirror while being kicked by a nun (and that's good compared to some people) I'll find someone who can draw...or steal clipart or something.

Years ago, a reporter at my TV station (who later went on to become an anchor in Los Angeles) was a Bond fanatic that I would certainly call self-posessed. (Well, what TV reporter isn't?) He came to a Christmas party in a Bondian white tux with butterfly black tie, and I saw hints of a shoulder holster when he moved. When he did a year-end story about the space shuttle, he insisted that the visual of the shuttle launch be backed with music from the score of "Moonraker."

I also co-wrote an espionage role-playing adventure played at conventions across the country that was set in the Bond universe. You're not supposed to make one character the "star" in those games, so everyone has a chance to contribute to the game's adventures. But my co-author insisted on making one character (the one he wanted to play) an imitation of Bond after the death of his wife, a brooding and haunted agent. The other five characters wound up being supporting characters for my co-writer's mania. As a genuinely novice writer I didn't object, and should have. My partner was truly "self-posessed," and not just about Bond, either.

By the way, I have heard (but never confirmed) that there were a series of paperbacks, ghost-written, that adopted the movie versions of the Bond films. The intention was supposedly to prevent readers from being "shocked" that the books were nothing like the movies. One would think that the Fleming estate would have complained. However, they apparently accepted other desecrations of the original Bond books, such as the horrible animated "James Bond Jr." and a recent "prequel" series of yount teen novels entitled "Young Bond," supposedly describing Bond's life as a student at Eton before World War II.