Why are people upset about this article? It's remarkably mild, and it mostly dredges up some history and clashes it against the present. Mr. Rasenberger just dredged up some facts about Springfield, listed them next to Obama's announcement and tried to make some sparks. This is a common way to produce an article if there is nothing in the situation that merits mention. Kind of like if there was some entree sold in the Seminole Hard Rock's bar that had some vague connection to the blonde bimbo that died there.

Those letters, like a mirror, reflect more about the writers than about anything Rasenberger wrote. It might have been different if there was something about Springfield that the current administration had affected. Say, to reach for straws, that more of its citizens died in Iraq than any other Illinois town or state capital. Bereft of that sensible connection, most of the responses are about the posters' attitudes towards race.

It is still valuable, of course. It shows up how our screwy attitudes towards race will pollute anything Obama does. No matter if he is as noble as Dr. King or as venal as Don King, race is going to play a part in his political career, and it could be a very unpredictable and weird factor, because everything we do with race is unpredictable and weird.

Havrilesky has finally noticed that 24, The Next White Rapper and American Idol are exercises in sadism and masochism. That puts her only about three years behind the rest of us. I don't know what kind of lead time Salon demands of its writers, but if it could be updated, she could have added something about the gruesome spectacle of the Anna Nicole Smith deathwatch. But that much work might drastically reduce her nail-salon time.

There's also a history of this cruelty in TV, and of course she's unaware of it. The simple "joshing" kind of practical jokes played on Bob Barker's Truth or Consequences were all an early audience could tolerate. That got amped up with Allan Funt's Candid Camera, which tried to gloss over its practical jokes with the claim that it let us "see ourselves as others see us." But it had its cruelties, making fun of Texans whose pronunciations of "oil" and "all" were indistinguishable, causing arguments over a tiny car with a huge internal gas tank, and watching kids eat deliberately warmed-up ice cream and getting messy.

It was a short step to Punk'd and its in-your-face offense. Good thing that host Ashton Kutcher didn't run across any rap/hip-hop/urban music stars or NFL players who were high and carrying weapons, or that would've been a real short show.

Sadism and masochism are a game, requiring the active participations of both parties. It's a cheap and stupid game, and the real fun comes when the two parties have different rules and expectations which have not been agreed upon. The usual pattern occurs when the masochist expects to get out of the situation alive, and the sadist plans to kill the masochist. But sometimes they switch roles. I have no doubt that Simon Cowell requires every contestant entering the building for auditions to be searched, possibly physically, for weapons. Until someone manages to foil those precautions, it's comforting to know that he lives in fear. If he has the capacity to think, that is.

As for 24, it looks as if the producers aren't anywhere near as creative or thoughtful as I had hoped. They had the chance to blow open the show's concept by showing a panicked populace, facing real nuclear terrorism, and they went back to their own S&M game. The thousands of dead and dying in the background, which in a smart series could have become a major plot element, simply became background to give legitimacy to CTU's fascist mission. Well, if we're unwilling to count the dead Americans in Iraq (let alone the Iraquis) why should fictional Americans be any different? That's why S&M is a game; it's myopic. They care more about one person being poisoned and sliced up than ten thousand.

Since Havrilesy decided to drag her baby into the discussion, and describe the way she's trying to turn her child into a clone of her uncomfortable self, I feel it's only fair to request that she officially change her pen name to Mrs. Havisham. And maybe if there's someone in her entourage that knows how to read, he can explain the meaning of that name to her.