Tbh, that's pretty close to a push-polling question. Do you think the Senator [a] beats his wife or [b] enjoys a happy marriage?

Didn't go through all the responses, but only deeply pretentious people think R.E.M. peaked with Reckoning.

Sorry your new favorite band got popular all those years ago. Grow up and get over it.

Re: Jewish characters in Coen movies. Walter Sobchak and Barton Fink, yes, but don't forget Verna and Bernie Birnbaum from their magnum opus, MILLER'S CROSSING (my favorite Coen flick, even over LEBOWSKI -- Then again, I'm Irish.)

And by pejorative I meant perjorative. Typos ftl.

I haven't seen the movie yet, so I can't knowledgably speak on it -- I have tickets for tomorrow night. (Speaking more broadly of QT, I think RESERVOIR DOGS is Tarantino's leanest storytelling, JACKIE BROWN is his best film, PULP FICTION's popularity is by no means unwarranted, and everything else since has been lacking, sometimes embarrassingly so.)

That being said, I get worried about this divide opening up between professional critics and "mindlessly enthusiastic fanboys" of late. (It played out last week over on Ebert's blog, and elsewhere.)

This is partly because I think using "fanboys" as a pejorative is a mistake -- Look at all the pro critic film geeks (David Edelstein, Roger Ebert, Elvis Mitchell) who went head over heels for all the blatant homage-dropping in the KILL BILLS. It was nothing if not fanboy. Or, to bring it closer to home, would you have picked I'M NOT THERE or CONTROL as the best movies of 2007 -- a position I shared with regards to Todd Haynes' brilliant film -- if you weren't a Dylan/music fangirl?

I'll be the first to admit fandom can get tyrannical, and it has taken on some very worrying aspects. (And, FWIW, I skipped both TRANSFORMERS 2 and GI JOE, because I've reached the age where I won't drop money on obviously terrible films.) But at its heart the "mindless enthusiasm" is based on an unabashed love of the cinema experience. Really, what's the harm in that, and how is it so different from the experience that propels professional (re: paid) critics to their fortunate employ?

He's always been a political blogger, and a thoroughly lousy one at that. Has he ever held an actual journalism position?

True, he spends most of his posts sucking up to people in power and parsing the day's news to find that exact comfortable midpoint where the CW resides...but that doesn't make him an establishment journalist. He's more just an admiring flunky of the powers-that-be.

Mind you, I'm not making the distinction to defend establishment journalists, almost all of whom deserve the heaps of scorn they get 'round here. But I do think it's important to point out.

The thing is, he's not even the worst blogger over at the Atlantic -- that would be the former Jane Galt, Megan McArdle. But he, and the much overpraised former Atlantic resident, Yglesias, are pretty darned terrible, in basically the same ways.

He's always been a political blogger, and a thoroughly lousy one at that.

True, he spends most of his posts sucking up to people in power and parsing the day's news to find that exact comfortable midpoint where the CW resides...but that doesn't make him an establishment journalist. He's more just an admiring flunky of the powers-that-be.

Thing is, he's not even the worst blogger over at the Atlantic -- that would be the former Jane Galt, Megan McArdle. But he, and the much overpraised former Atlantic resident, Yglesias, are pretty darned terrible, in basically the same ways.

The analogy used to start off the piece isn't that much kinder to these folks than simply calling them idiot racists.

Regardless, I agree with the many commenters that the kindler, gentler approach probably isn't going to get us anywhere. As my old boss was wont to say, don't waste your time wrestling with a pig -- you just get dirty and the pig loves it.

Meaning that the Barney Frank approach - there's no point in coddling morons at this delicate hour -- is, imho, the way to go.

When it comes to these sorts of things, I'm of the Hunter S. Thompson school (http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/graffiti/crook.htm) -- Only speaking good of the dead is in itself a betrayal of the deceased. If you despised them in life, you might as well stay true to that feeling as they shuffle off. (As the philosopher Walter Sobchak put it in The Big Lebowski -- "The man in the black pajamas. Worthy f**king adversary.")

When it came to say, Helms or Falwell, I basically agreed with the Clarence Darrow line: "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." For Novak, it's more just a shrug. He's been on his way out for years, this was just the last step.

But I'm not going to start pretending, now that the man ha breathed his last, that he was suddenly a great guy. Far from it.

It's quite good and a definite must-see, and if there's any justice in this world it'll make thrice the money of crap like GI Joe and Transformers 2. But "Moon," imho, remains the best sci-fi film of 2009.

After the long primary of 2008, I am not what you'd call a fan of Sec. Clinton. That being said, her response here was entirely appropriate. The question as posed was demeaning, offensive, and stupid, and she responded with as much composure as it deserved. Let's move on.