The following was posted to a public, non-political, chat board I frequent, on the 4th of July. When one person very mildly suggested the posting was racist, others accused the objector of not having a sense of humor.

Don't forget to mark your calendars.

As you may already know, it is a sin for a Muslim male to see any woman other than his wife naked. He must commit suicide if he does. So next Saturday at 4 PM Eastern Time, all American women are asked to walk out of their house completely naked to help weed out any neighborhood terrorists. Circling your block for one hour is recommended for this anti-terrorist effort.

All patriotic men are to position themselves in lawn chairs in front of their house to prove they are not Muslims, & to demonstrate they think it's okay to see nude women other than their wife, & to show support for all American women. Since Islam also does not approve of alcohol, a cold 6-pack at your side is further proof of your anti-Muslim sentiment. We American's appreciate your efforts to root out terrorists & applaud your participation in this anti-terrorist activity.

God bless America !

Being a "racist" or an "anti-semite" is a bad thing (which is a good thing). Unfortunately, so far there's no word for anti-Muslim which brings with it the same automatic revulsion the other two words do. Although maybe that's simply because it is not considered beyond the Pale to want to kill all muslims, or turn their countries into "glass parking lots". Too many of us applaud the demonization.

About the time that humans have started to understand and appreciate all the different races and groups on earth and stop demonizing "the other" because there are no others....some three-legged green guys from Outer Space will appear, and we'll start the cycle anew.

Do you know what happened to the Dawn Johnson nomination?

Re Obama's due process: I hope everyone is calling the White House to complain about this travesty.

Reading these letters, I've come to realize that those who approve of torture and "harsh techniques" are simply tribalists. They honor and value nothing except their own tribe. Anyone who criticizes the tribe or threatens it in any way -- even just by being different -- is scary and by definition evil (since evil=NotOurTribe). Those outside Our Tribe who might hurt Us need to be "taken out", one way or another, and it really doesn't matter how it's done or the consequences for the outsiders. (They are horrified that The Other killed 3,000 of ours, but totally unmoved that Our Tribe killed over 100,000 Iraqis who did nothing, nothing to us.)

What they mean by "America" is "Our Tribe". What we mean by "America", i.e., the place where the Rule of Law is supposed to be upheld, where ALL humans are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, where "freedom" means free of the fear of government knocking on your door in the night -- that America they don't know anything about and don't like.

As far as I know, tribalists cannot be reasoned with. If you're not part of The Tribe, anything you say that contradicts their worldview is just heard as "blah blah blah blah socialism blah blah blah terraist lover blah blah blah good dog."

Keep up the good work, Glenn. It's an uphill battle, but dents have been made in the castle walls.

That is all.

(Not really, of course.)

Why is this so clear to us, and so opaque to Peter King, shooter, et al?

Is shooter coherent enough to explain why what Paine said is wrong?

Your dents are illusory.

Boy, you haven't been close enough to my dents to tell if they're real or not.

The NPR discussion sounds like it will be fun.

A sort of OT, but I read this and thought of you and your effort to understand what is wrong with our media:

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/

Short piece in TinyRev about CIGNA employee Potter who makes this especially interesting point:

During my 20 years in corporate communications and public affairs, I participated in the steady growth and influence of largely invisible persuasion -- and at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and investigative journalism seems to be vanishing. The number of PR people long ago surpassed the number of working journalists in this country. And that ratio of PR people to reporters will continue to grow. The clear winners as this shift occurs are big, rich corporations and other special interests. The losers are average Americans, most of whom are completely unaware how their thoughts and actions are being manipulated to achieve corporate goals on Capitol Hill.

Piece links to Potter's original piece and blog.

President Obama spent part of the weekend playing golf with Thomas Friedman:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0909/Friedman_jumps_to_the_front_of_the_influence_list.html

I'd heard that Obama was carrying around Friedman's latest "book" on his vacation. Now this. Enough to make me completely question Obama's judgment. Friedman is not only spectacularly wrong most of the time, but he is also not very smart and a twit. (Won't even bother going into the "smug evil bastard" part.)