You said: "...all this hand-wringing over a piece of show-business that will have no effect on policy and will be forgotten, if even noticed, by most Americans. How on earth are you folks going to cope when Obama can't meet some of your other expectations?"

You are absolutely right. It's really not important at all in the larger scheme of things. Some of us just think Warren is a major tool so we like to vent.

I think we have become so sick of seeing the fundie Christian right try to grab the reigns of government that when we see a progressive that so many of us are personaly invested in cozy up to them-- well, it gives us the willies.

I guess we should all keep in mind the old saying, "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

This article was three pages of hand wringing over the fate of publishing houses only to end with a quote from Neelan Choksi that pretty much makes the whole argument moot: "If the last five or 10 years have shown us anything, it's this: content will get out," ...if you have something to say, it will get heard. It just might not look like the traditional publishing model you are used to."

I don't know one writer (myself included) that gives ahoot over the fate of the big publishing houses. There are millions of avid readers out there who will continute to hunger for good writing and tens of thousands of writers who will continue to suppy it. Somewhere in between are a host of resourceful and innovative people who will make sure that that supply gets to that demand. The notion that literature will somehow suffer without the aid of the stodgy publishing houses is ridiculous.

Wow, that was a really pretentious article! Back when I was an editor I would have kicked the shit out of any of my writers that turned in a piece with any of the the following words, expressions or sentences:

“Iteration”

“Monotonic”

“actinically focused”

“massive, pyroclastic flows of opinion”

“nekulturn”

“nuanced Gedanken experiments about speculative change”

“garish calamities that began quenching this naive zeal for progress”

“Or will the Web's centrifugal effects spin us all into little islands of shared conviction -- midget Nuremberg rallies -- where facts become irrelevant and any opinion can be a memic god?”

“One wherein expertise is lost and democracy becomes a tyranny of lobotomized imitation and short-tempered reflex, as viral YouTube moments spread everywhere instantaneously, getting everybody laughing or nodding or seething to the same memes -- an extreme resonance of reciprocal mimicry or hyper-mimesis. And everybody hyper-empowered to react impulsively at almost the speed of thought.”

Ouch!

You said: “I grew up in the newspaper trade and know how to keep it simple. But these are SALON readers!”

You don't read much Salon do you?

You said: “Anyway, your belief in dumbing-down is part of the problem.”

I don’t want to dumb anything down. I’m criticizing what I consider to be overblown and pretentious prose. The fact that you think that you’re writing for some sort of elevated audience underscores my point.

You said: “You'll not find a single $5 word that I used, whose meaning could not be guessed from context (that's what good writers do!)…”

I disagree with you but let’s leave that up to the other readers to weight in on.

You said: “Words are poetry and your reflex to quash the scope of vivid English simply shows how low an opinion you have of those you edit-for.”

I actually have a pretty high opinion of my readers and that why I take pains to make sure they get what I mean. Besides that I don’t think I have a “reflex to quash the scope of vivid English.” I just have a very different idea of what makes English vivid.

I appreciate your response but stand by what I said.

You said: "You know, you come across as condescending and overly simplistic. Big words bother you? that's how the downward spiral starts."

I never said I had a problem with big words or clever, beautiful language. All I said was that Brin's prose in this particular article was pretentious and overblown. Look at the example I gave:

“One wherein expertise is lost and democracy becomes a tyranny of lobotomized imitation and short-tempered reflex, as viral YouTube moments spread everywhere instantaneously, getting everybody laughing or nodding or seething to the same memes -- an extreme resonance of reciprocal mimicry or hyper-mimesis. And everybody hyper-empowered to react impulsively at almost the speed of thought.”

A 55 word sentence of pure purple bullshit. The whole article is like that; like it was written by a meth addict on a three day bender.Why you're getting all persnickety and assuming that I'm attacking intelligent, thoughtful writing is beyond me.

"This is the fundamental problem in having a science fiction author, whose world is science, trying to communicate with a bunch of English majors who were brought up by their Boomer parents to regard science as a threat."

That is truly a load of shit!

Thank you Joe for reporting on the real reason behind the Rich pardon. However, with that said I still think that it was a sleazy move on Clinton's part and that he should have just told Shimon Peres and Shabtai Shavit to go fuck themselves when they pushed for the pardon!

A fitting cap on a career dedicated to subverting democracy.

We can close Gitmo and stop torture but this country will not get it's soul back until we prosecute those responsible for selling it.

First an article on her butt and now the hair. When can we expect a trenchant and deep analysis on her cup size?