Sorry for the off-topic, but I just had to post this while it was still fresh in my mind.

Chris Matthews ("Tweety") did it again. On the topic of whether Bill Richardson could beat Giuliani, he asked Richardson, "You're bigger than him, aren't you?"

This clear, ongoing my-daddy-can-beat-up-your-daddy pathology Chris Matthews has is equal parts ludicrous, scary, and sad. Really, what's his deal?

MATTHEWS: What does George W. Bush smell like? Does he have a manly musk, or does he smell.... clean. Can you smell his sweat, his musk?

O'DONNELL: I... I don't know what you're talking about.

MATTHEWS: George Bush strikes me as a man's man. He flies in on the aircraft carrier... He walks like a cowboy, like a middle-aged cow hand. Does he smell like a cowboy?

O'DONNELL: I can't... I...

MATTHEWS: I'd like to smell the man. I'd like to get a sense of his manliness through smell. I think that would be GREAT. I bet he smells like our fathers smelled when we were kids in the 60s. Like Aqua Velva. A manly musk covered by a good old fashioned working-man's after shave.

OH MY GOD.

I'm sure it's been said by others before, but I'm a tad disconcerted by the way one or two "trolls" can so easily take what began as an inspiring and illuminating discussion of the points Glenn has made and turn it into a red herring fishing expedition.

I'm all for sharpening one's skills of argumentation against a (worthy) adversary, but what I see more often than not is just silly distraction at best.

Perhaps I just haven't witnessed how the conversation has "evolved" gradually into other topics, but how exactly did this thread turn into a referendum on Venezuela?

It didn't, really, but to whatever extent that a referendum on Venezeula is occurring in this thread, it's because RealName brought it up and we're hammering on the troll. No other reason. But you're right, it's gotten rather uninteresting. As you say, he's not a particularly worthy adversary.

I suppose I might just be bitter that by the time I get home from work and view the day's thread, the comments have already hit 20 pages and the conversation has drifted to other topics.

Get a RealHobby. We're all quite impressed by how self-impressed you are, making non-points with such great fanfare and putting on your best "answer the question!" impression of Sean Hannity.

Interesting...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/08/AR2007050801276.html?hpid=sec-world

Iran yesterday detained prominent American academic Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, according to center president and director Lee H. Hamilton and Esfandiari's husband.

***

"The government's justification for these actions is usually couched as a response to the State Department's announcement to provide financial support to Iranian civil society and nongovernment organizations," said Hadi Ghaemi of Human Rights Watch. "This has fueled a perception among the Iranian politicians that the U.S. is committed to instigating a 'velvet revolution' in Iran.

***

During her interrogations, Esfandiari was pressured to make false confessions or to falsely implicate the Wilson Center in activities in which it had no role, Hamilton said. Esfandiari was contacted again a few days ago and asked to "cooperate" with intelligence ministry officials, which she refused. On Monday she was told to report to the Ministry of Intelligence again. When she arrived yesterday, she was taken to Evin Prison. It is unclear whether she has been formally charged with any offense.

Such a thing would never happen here. We've got a much better spider-sense that the people we detain are in fact what we say they are. Go back to sleep. Everything is under control.

He'll actually go door to door, or convene a group of neighbors, to find out what's important to them.

See, Broder knows how the "ordinary people" think because he leaves the Beltway and goes and studies them real up close like farm animals and then comes back to Washington and publishes his findings about the behavioral patterns of this odd species known as "the people."

I've seen the kinds of "neighborhoods" and houses Washington power-players live in. If Broder lives as I suspect he probably does, might I suggest a more apt metaphor: he studies his over-fed cat and publishes findings about the behavioral patterns of the Siberian mountain lion.

I certainly don't enjoy the "vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left" that's for sure.

Do you confine this sentiment to "bloggers on the left?"

Now we have Joe Klein responding to you. Well, congratulations, but outside Editor & Publisher or Columbia Journalism Review, this exchange has no value. Please let him do his job, and please do yours.

...But if you want me to believe bloggers are adding value to the political discussion, well, add value to the political discussion. I can form my own opinion of Joe Klein and David Broder.

No political discussion, particularly in the current era, is complete without addressing the 500-pound gorilla that is the central medium of political information: the "mainstream" media. Glenn has made the point abundantly clear, so I need not reiterate it.

Suffice to say, if meaningful progress is to be effected within a reasonable amount of time, and with substantive results, the gross falsehood and laziness at the core of our most revered media sources must be aggressively confronted with the truth.

This is not just another instance of incestuous, self-gratifying navel-gazing by the media, of the media. This is an absolutely integral part of restoring any semblance of reason and veracity to the national discourse, which does, after all, directly affect the politics you seem to put above such cruder things.