What a stupid, silly article. One example of Lind's ineptness:(quoting a scholar)"...Goldwater-Reagan activists tended to be successful, educated people for whom conservative ideology was not a mask for something else but a coherent belief system..."

Duh. Why are these mutually exclusive? I'm no sociologist but here's an easy bet: ALL belief system's mask/hide/project/internalize certain things...for better or worse.

My belief system dictates that Lind is full of shit.

Joan, standards are slipping honey.

Gregg M.

Phoenix, AZ

Joan, you're starting to freak me out. It's almost like wish fulfillment...keep saying that...OMG!...Obabma really did make a major gaffe...Is he electable? Trustworthy? Too arrogant?

Weird.

Then you blame screeds like mine (as it were) on blind Obama support. Yet, like a scab, you insist on picking, picking, picking. Wasted energy all.

Meanwhile...back at the White House...more war crimes are being prepared (Iran anyone)? And Hillary cravenly (sue me) keeps plying tactics from Karl Rove's playbook, a win-at-all costs strategy.

Ergh, I used to love Salon. Huffington Post anyone?

Eureka!. Someone early in these comments (and maybe more than once...haven't read them all) has hit the nail on the head! Noww I know why my discomfort with Joan's writing. She's patronizing, elitist, preachy. But here's the kicker...she tries to be all things to all people and in doing so, only serves to come across as wishy-washy and insincere. C'mon Joan! Take a side! Be partisan! Let your inner Alpha-female out! But for God's sake, act like a journalist. Not the comprimising kinds we're all so used to. Unleash your real inner journalist with some fire and passion! You'll never please everyone but I guarantee you'll gain more respect. You have a unique bully pulpit at Salon. Use it! We're adults here...we can handle incoming fire...no matter the issue. Don't be so wishy-washy...find a strong voice and go with it!

Here's the problem. Salon is a good, often great read. There's really nothing quite like it on the internet (forget Slate). So what's a thinking person to do? Joan Walsh, at least from what I've seen on t.v. seems like a nice enough, reasonable person. But her posts/columns are invariably hideous, ignorant, pious, out-of-touch, patronizing...more becoming of The New Republic perhaps and even then...(The Weekly Standard maybe)?

Yet, like a badly mangled car accident, they're often hard to ignore. Hence the dilemma. I've decided, there's enough good in Salon to rebut Joan's nonsense and just wait/hope for the day when the good power's that be at Salon find it fit (and long overdue) to get a new Editor-in-Chief.

Well, in reading some of the responses here, at least I'm not alone.

I'm hoping the rest of the country will see this as the non-issue it is but pushed by a MSM that thrives on pettiness, I won't hold my breath. Our priorities are so skewed in this country, we have the intellectual discernment of children. Hello? Iraq anyone? Global poverty? Do I hear a yeah for global warming? Look. politics is politics and it's a dirty game. I get it. Why is Obama being castigated for what his preacher said. Let's castigate McCain for relishing calling Vietnamese gooks or Hilary for sitting on a WalMart corporate board that gleefully exploited workers here and abroad. Oh my bad. I'm just another naive, unimportant American voter. Nothing ever changes, Nothing.

So many important issues. The MSM (including Salon now) remain fixated on trivial, side issues. A logical conclusion is acserned. The MSM could give a hoot about issues but superficial one's with nothing but contempt for us mere mortals. It's the old bait and switch and we...those of us taken in by it...are the ultimate suckers. And so now, Salon has joined the fray perpetuating a dialogue and narrative that at best should be a fringe issue.

Makes one retch. Tragedy and farce both.

Gary, your articles are consistently the most interesting and broad-based this site has to offer. Congratulations again a fine job. I'm one Jew all for a new approach to the staleness of this decades long debate.

Who was Obama trying to appease with this speech today? The likes of Bill O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough, and Joan Walsh? The speech only served to elevate the "controversy" as an "important issue" (an issue that is mainly a spectacle whipped up by the MSM). Watch how many (and I do mean many) news cycles now devote time to this rather than rightfully let it go.

Obama will now be even more defined by the Hilary/Faux News/MSM crowd. Thinking that the speech will leave the Wright affair in the past, Obama miscalculated the insidiousness of those who would want him gone. And to this, with this defensive, apologetic speech, he only has himself to blame.

I still support Obama but a few choice and yes, graceful comments, could've easily staved off his final rebutal to Wright...for those whose vote he still needed anyway.

Hilary now emerges as the economic populist of the "Reagan Democrats" who Obama was trying to please with this speech (along with the MSM).

Obama has fed the beast when he didn't need to...he played into enemy hands.

Is the mojo gone? Has he taken the wind out of the sails of fervent supporters...African Americans, the youth vote, independents? Has has allowed the narrative of his campaign of hope to change in his disfavor by appeasing out of electoral fear? (And in doing so, looking like another, tired politician when he didn't need to)?

A possibility perhaps: Hilary finds new legs and takes this to a brokered, riotous convention. Gore/Edwards emerge as the consensus ticket to right (no pun intended) a now broken ship.

I hope I'm wrong about all this but I got a bad, quesy feeling watching Obama's speech today.