The media was the one making a big deal out of their so-called sparring this past week or so.

And people who pay attention to the media, including Salon, have been using this as an opportunity to insult their disfavored candidate, beatify their favored candidate, and call anyone who disagrees with them racist and/or sexist and/or just plain dumb.

What we have all been forgetting is that, though racism and sexism doubtless exist and rear their ugly heads whenever they please, any of the Democratic candidates are going to be far better and far more progressive than any Republican who might win the election. In the grand scheme of things, a Clinton-lover who refused to vote for Obama in the general election, or vice versa, or an Edwards supporter who refused to vote for either of the others, would merely be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

It's time we all remembered that we have far more in common than not.

Why is it that people who know nothing else about Churchill love bringing up that tired quote about Lady Astor?

It's like quoting the one line of Shakespeare you remember from high school to sound learned and well-read.

It is perhaps too obviously ironic to even mention that the only reason anyone has ever heard of this hack is because of the Internet. C'est le vie...

why it's such an out-of-bounds topic to mention Obama's past drug use.

Isn't it odd that in this day and age, a person's drug use can be used against their opponents?

OMG a black speaker for HRC brought up a 'truthiful' fact. A fact replete with truthiness. He may or may not have been directly alluding to it. But even if he was, it's still a fact. OBAMA DID DRUGS. WHOO.

Somehow, that makes Hillary A) a racist B) a bad person and makes Obama A) a great man and B) a good person.

Now, I'm not too good at math but I still don't quite get that equation.

And I'm sure the rational black people of the world are sick and goddamn tired of people acting as though every drug reference must also be a reference to black people. Because, folks, it's not.

First of all, I'd like to know what kind of mental contortionism you would have to perform to think I was a Jewish girl, because I'm neither, sorry.

Second of all, I have a hard time believing that something like "I am not a good german solider nor a modern person of a germany society that followed orders....sorry to disappoint.." was meant to imply anything OTHER than the person to whom you were referring was a Nazi.

Or perhaps you're just inexplicably racist against Germans? And you like to imply that, because you're allegedly not drinking the German Kool-Aid, other people must be?

So really what you're saying is that we just like brats and beer?

Yeah, I believe that. Sure. I've got a bridge in New York I can sell you, too.

You, my dear, are the epitome of "arrogant prick." You are exactly like all the white racists in the world. I know... because I know quite a few white racists. Actually I've been threatened by them before. You create a world paradigm for yourself, and then anyone who doesn't agree must be wrong. Anyone who does not see the world the exact way you see it is a fool. Anyone who is different from you deserves nothing from you.

Do you know what the Germans did? They tried to create Christ and God in their own image. Much like you have done. You have claimed at least twice that Jesus was a "black Jew" when any intellectually honest person in the world would never be able to say that. Even James Cone, one of the great black liberation theologians, admitted that his "black Messiah" was allegorically and not literally black.

So you, my dear, are a fool unworthy of even my contempt. Sorry. But that's just how the cookies crumble. If you want to pull that stick out of your butt and converse with human beings like a human being, then maybe people will actually start paying attention to you. Until then, you are absolutely no better than any neo-Nazi: Full of hot air, self-adulation, and not much else.

And you're pretty stupid if you don't see that I am arguing against the black/drug relationship. I mean, yes, technically, black people are more likely to be involved in drug crap than other races. Luckily, unlike some people, I don't judge a person based on the inclinations of their race, but on their own actions.

Which is why I said that rational black people should hate this issue as much as I do. Why is it that overly-defensive white Obama supporters decry a black man talking about Obama's drug past as racist? First of all, that makes no sense in itself. Second of all, it assumes that a person who talks about drug use must be doing so in a racist context, or that to call someone a drug user (even if they have admitted doing it) is somehow a racial slur. Which it absolutely isn't.

There is no racism in a discussion of Obama's admitted and NATIONALLY PUBLISHED drug use. If he was so touchy about the subject, maybe he shouldn't have written about it in his book. And maybe we, the people, have the right to make judgments about him and his actions because he ACTUALLY DID DRUGS and not because he is (half) black and therefore somehow beyond our criticism.

Except that Obama was never a street hood.

He was middle-class and raised by his white mother and grandmother.