I didn't get it. I didn't think this was funny. The modern bias that male homosexuality is some kind of betrayal of masculinity is again reflected in this utterly juvenile, cliched, tiresome portrayal of gay men who it appears either wish they were female or who some how ARE. Obviously the people who made this just don't get it. It smacks of straight boys who are anxious and confused about their own homoerotic feelings so they deal with it by either outright beating up on queers or by portraying them as "sissies," as Other, as somehow comical. Not to be taken seriously. It also refelcts an utter failure to imagine same sex relationships as anything other than imitation heterosexuality. "Brokeback Mountain" went a long way toward dispelling a lot of myths about who's indulging in male homosexuality. (Amazing that such an honest and true film about homosexual lives was made in the United States. Hollywood usually does a god awful job of it!) I frankly think it's freaked the straight boys out, which is why they can't stop talking about it, usually in some kind of joking way. Which ones haven't outright run from it, are using it as a way to flirt with each other! Some of the most effeminate men I know are straight. Will Americans ever grow up about male homosexuality or are we doomed to continously reinforce these obnoxious stereotypical attitudes? Do so-called straight people think they're being all open and accepting and "liberal" if they see male homos as "feminine" in some way? I hate Will and Grace and I hate Queer Eye for the same reasons. There isn't a queer on TV worth paying attention to. Contemporary gay culture and media are just as guilty of this tiresome attitude as is the straight media. Not only is this not funny, it's insulting. Maybe you'd like to explain why you think it's funny.

Scalia is an intellectual midget and a fraud. He's also a liar. If he truly believes what he claims to believe, he would have voted to let the state of Florida decide Gore v. Bush. He would have followed the Constitution and kept the Supreme Court of it. He's an activist judge with an agenda. Funny how that strict constructionist thing always comes out on the conserviative side.

Is anyone sending notes to Howard and telling him how pissed off we here at Salon.com are at the Party leadership? Is it only us 20 or so on Salon.com who are fed up with the failures of the Democratic Party? Do the Democrats who have not only capitualted but colluded with this Administration in the Terror War on Working People actually believe that the voters will support them at election time only because the Republicans have revealed themselves to be who they have been for the last 100 years, the Party of the wealthy? Does the DL know something we and Russ don't know about the American political marketplace? Does the tracking data and the polling data and the focus group data and the consumer data all show that the American voter is just as feckless, fickle and spinless as the Democratic Party Leadership? Is the DL actually as arrogant and out of touch with grassroots America as the Right has long been saying? What IS the Dems "50 state strategy" for winning back control? Becoming Republican-Lite? Is there really much difference between the two parties, really? What exactly IS the DL strategy and agenda? Poor and working class young men are dying, lives are being destroyed, working and middle class families are being torn apart, needlessly, and the Democratic Party appears to have abandoned them. The Democratic Leadership is an oxymoron.

Now THAT's clever!

Story about two Pennsylvania Amish men who fall in love with each other...The Hershey Highway! Now THAT'S FUNNY!

These pictures were first published by the Australian media. Since a number of Middle Eastern households and certainly Middle Eastern governmental and academic institutions have internet access, I suspect the people of the Middle East have already seen them. Salon isn't publishing these pictures to stir up the enemy. They're already stired up. Salon is publishing them for Americans to see what atrocities have been carried out in their name. Torturing has consequences for the torturers too. Keeping Americans in the dark about it isn't going to change that. When the next airplane is driven into the next American skyscraper, we might have a clearer understanding for some of the reasons for it.