Will your head explode if I tell you that somewhere (actually many places) there are people working on things that may well benefit many people because they (a) want to benefit people or (b) love the work for its own sake and (c) don't give a flying f**k about getting rich, filthy or otherwise...just make enough to be reasonably comfortable?

To a man with only a hammer everything looks like a nail; one who thinks money is the only motivator (as you seem to) will have great problems understanding that there are other values. Uh, you might want to check out the Bible for some suggestions. (When Jesus said that Man does not live by bread alone I think he was being metaphorical.)

I was actually anticipating this column, trying to imagine how Ms. Paglia would use Obama's first weeks as a platform to display what she evidently takes for wit, erudition, and elegant prose. Although shorter than usual, it was even more vapid...needlessly verbose, self-indulgent, and annoying (I struggled here to find a more "interesting" word, but failed. I guess I'll never make it as a columnist.)

Is there anything that anchors Ms. Paglia's thoughts other than that they are hers? Free-associative monologues such as this have been done already, with mixed results in fiction. In writing that purports to impart information or present a world-view for consideration, they are disasters. We start with Edmond Purdom, detour through Rita Hayworth's measurements (now there would be an interesting column...why a "petite" woman projects a sexuality that burns hotter than any "hottie" flouncing around today...or am I just showing my age?), skip on to Marilyn Monroe in Camelot, and linger over a dress designer that most of us have never heard of. And to judge by what we learned, for good reason.

I just spent about 15 minutes doing the new Kenken puzzle in the NYT. I spent less time reading this column.I benefitted more from the former than the latter.

PS @kahawa The sinister "Fairness Doctrine" is a "fata morgana" of the wingnuttery, with less substance than the annual "War on Christmas". No Dem in any position of power or influence has raised it at all. But your observation on humor as used by liberals is quite accurate...and humor is usually a more effective weapon than rancor. (To flaunt my own erudition a bit, if you have not heard of Karl Kraus, try a Google search.) The best part of Jon Stewart's latest skewering if Billo the Clown (on stalking with a camera) works by using film clips from O'Reilly's shows, with minimal comment from Stewart. Hoist by one's own petard is the best hoist of all.

that Bush did not say "no" to Darth Cheney sooner, and more often!

Right on, bro! On behalf of all pudgy people, I protest!

That I haven't bought the Post for about 20 years, so I can't stop buying it. It used to be an interesting somewhat left-leaning paper (remember James Wexler, anyone?). But Rupert put an end to that, and turned it (like his paper in Boston the Herald) into a megaphone for faux-populism, the offspring of George Wallace, Benito Mussolini, and Father Charles Coughlin. Anything to keep the proles anger focused off-target.

Where did you find this information? While I am no a professional authority on the Civil War, I have read many thousands of pages on it over two decades, researched some private sources, and think I would have noted something so remarkable as newspaper editors beaten to death, by Kennedys no less! Names, places, times, and contemporary sources, please? Otherwise it sounds (and I suspect that it is so) that you or someone is just making it up.