Nice article, Laura.

I agree that it is unfair for Susan Jacoby to blame the media for the message. Pablum exists in many forms, including print.

Whatever form you choose, the content is there. The problem is, outside of academia, no one will compel you to confront ideas outside of your own orthodoxy. Republicans, Democrats, & Libertarians alike share the classroom; but once you graduate, if you graduate at all, you can pick whatever position on the AM dial you choose, and stay there all day long.

I also think your conclusion put a really good spin on the issue. "Reasonable" people can disagree - and often do. Almost everyone understands that at some level, many decisions we make must come from the gut. So how do we convince ourselves to make the extra effort required to educate ourselves?

And what of the fact that our world has become so complicated that any delusions anyone might have about achieving some kind of all-encompassing renaissance understanding of the world are laughable? What should a well-heeled intellectual know these days? Is Susan Jacoby current with information technology issues? Shouldn't she be, considering their influence and ubiquity? Why is it that classical academics always seem to take the moral high ground when it comes to cultural and educational critique? There's a lot more to the world than Beowulf; although apparently the updated version features a nice digital rendition of Angelina Jolie, so I might someday spend a couple of hours becoming at least passingly familiar with the tale. That is more than I would have done otherwise. I call that progress.

Some fun caricatures you might like:

http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/

Your post brings 'blowhard' and 'troglodyte' to mind.

Prolly this will get lost in this terribly long list of letters. I just wanted to say I wasn't saying that either of the flame warrior references I posted pertained to *you*. I just though you would find the flame warrior list funny, and those two in particular seemed to reflect personalities you referred to in your earlier post - which I liked.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I understand that you don't want jerk offs cluttering up your ezine. I appreciate and support that. So in kind, could you please stop running a zillion ads per page, half of which seem to contain so much f'd up scripting that they freeze my browser? If you're going to start forcing etiquette on your readers, please do the same to your sponsors. Really.

You've got a workable business model. Ads for non-subscribers, a less cluttered experience for subscribers. But stop making ads a form of punishment. Thanks.

Oh come on Glenn, you're a champion of speaking truth to power, and now you want to throw in the towel for poor Eliot? He made his own bed, no? Sure - prostitution, smoking pot, etc. don't rise to the level of murdering thousands of innocent civilians in a mindless moralizing campaign of neocon self-love - but if anyone should be held accountable for a crime, it should be the politicians and prosecutors who write and enforce the very laws they are breaking. It's not like Elliot need fear the reaper here; he's simply going to have to endure humiliating media scrutiny, a mock trial, and will live out his current domestic situation in the doghouse.

But Spitzer should be nevertheless be prosecuted for the same reason Charlie Rangel was right to call for reinstating the draft at the beginning of the Iraq war. The consequences of the actions of our government should be made manifest for everyone equally. The only chance we have of preventing the powerful from abusing their position is to hold them just as accountable for their actions as citizens as they would hold everyone else. To do unto them as they would do unto others.

The proper way to remedy the injustice of Spitzer's situation (if it is indeed injust, which is not the point I'm debating here) is not to let him off the hook, but to let everyone off the hook, by amending the stupid law that would penalize him in the first place. We do have the mechanisms in place for doing this, we just seem to have forgotten how to use them. We should start by not electing clowns to high office. If we do, well, who's to blame for that? Well, that would be us, no?

What we should not do is to arbitrarily enforce the law. There's no end of trouble if we go down that road, as I think you well know. Yes, this does happen from time to time, but that doesn't make it right.

If the court of public opinion comes down on Elliot's side, then perhaps someday the law will too. And when the laws are amended, then and only then should the judiciary act as you suggest. Maybe there is a better system of government, but for now, that's the one we have, and I personally have not invented a better one. Have you?

This is a silly position to take. Don't sully your excellent reputation by defending Elliot. No matter how much good he has done (and I think he's done a lot), he screwed up here (so to speak). He's a public figure, so he's going to have to endure more humiliation than most. Good for him.

Oh, and the difference between prostitution and pornography? Pornographers aren't liars. Trust matters. Ask Elliot's wife. Trust is the foundation of civil society. Pornographers don't have any secrets. Prostitutes and their clients are intentionally deceitful.

That's just semantic bickering, however; as the main point remains that one is illegal and one is not. If you don't think that's right, then run for office, make that your platform, and fix the law. Otherwise live with the laws we have or overthrow the government. You can also continue squealing from the sidelines that "somebody should do something", but don't expect much to come of it.