I've lived long enough to have the music I grew up with (the Beatles, Motown, Atlantic artists, Dave Clark Five, The Monkies, Elvis, James Taylor, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, plus all the other pop stuff of the 60's and 70's) to just depress the hell out of me when I often hear it now. (Especially The Beatles and James Taylor) When it's connected to a product or a service it not only depresses me it cheapens the music and its personal meanings for me. I can't say exactly why it puts me in a funk, perhaps because it's from another time and place and often has a association with people and relationships that no longer exist.

On another note, why do people assume that you want to listen to their ugly music while "your party is being contacted" when you call on a cellphone? I always hold the phone away from my ear until I can make out that something relevant is going on on the other end.

I despise the ceaseless, obnoxious, blathering, intrusive, mindless television. People have a more profound emotional and psychological relationship with images on a screen than they do with the people to whom they're related sitting next to them on the sofa. I haven't watched the stupid thing for seven years and will not sit long in a room that has one on. The quicker we can blow it up the better.

Joan Baez wrote a song in the 1970's called "Time Rag" about being interviewed by a Time Mag reporter. Here he's asking her about Dylan, and then the bridge:

Then suddenly it stopped and he started to lobby

Said, Tell me some inside stuff about Bobby

Bobby who? I smiled and said

And the TIME man's face was laced with red

I know you guys used to know each other

I know you refer to him as being your brother

And I know that you know where he's coming from

I said, You know alot for being so Goddamned dumb

And I said, TIME, TIME mag, mag

You got me on the rag, rag

Take your insults about the queen

And shove them up your royal Timese machine

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Nothing's changed.

i>News coverage is just another form to content to drive ad impressions and revenue, no different from Lost or America's Next Top Model.

-- cestmoi123>

Intead of being a coward and putting your fingers in your ears why don't you try listening to your readers and responding to their very valid criticisms of your resident idiot.

James Margaris

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Oh heavens no don't take the delightfully nutty Camille away! Where would we go to read such trenchant letter writing in response to her nonsense!? I don't even bother reading her stuff anymore, I just go straight to the letters. Someone ought to gather them into a book.

Lois Romano: "The Internet has complicated this responsibility because there is so much garbage and falsehoods out there."

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No shit Lois, like the lying garbage put up by Time. Inc., right?

Maybe, but I doubt it. My sister is a racist but she didn't get it from our mother, nor from our father. Our parents were not racists and neither are any of my other three brothers. Where did my sister get it? From the man she married, his family and her racist friends.

I demand equal time for jockstraps!

Two of these lawmakers who failed to object to torture are women. Anyone who seriously believes that the human world would somehow be more kind and humane if women were totally in control of it is a fool. Women, like men, defend their privileges, support their class, exploit their advantages, and suck up to power most of the time because that's safer than challenging it.

No, they're lying.

...an article about celebrities I can read. I've always loathed our media obsessed culture. I haven't watched TV in years, never did I ever read the gossip mags, rarely anymore do I even go to the movies. The fact that someone is "famous" is boring. Although I am often drawn to the work others have done, whatever the famous do in their personal lives is of no interest. I've also lived long enough to tell the difference between genuine talent and mugging. I know many very talented and gifted people who have never been on TV, and never will. They are far more important than anyone in the celebrity mags. To all those who follow that garbage, I say, Get a Life!

"Edwards, whose rhetoric is normally perfectly coiffed..."

Coiffed? This is why Al Gore isn't running. You people, yes, YOU people Mr. Shapiro. What's the difference between you and Ann Coulter when you write crap like that? You smarmy twits in the press are what's wrong with our politics.

Way to go Glenn! The work you do holding up a mirror to the traditional press, taking down their arrogance, exposing their bias is critical to the survival of this Republic. Someday, in the best of all possible worlds, I see you receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor. You're the main reason I come to Salon.

I don't know a darn thing about medals. I just threw in the Congressional Medal of Honor thing because it sounded all high-falutin' and important, like the kind of stuff they pass out to people who have done something right for a change. But then didn't they give one of those to George Tenet? Maybe that was the Presidential Medal of Honor. In all honesty, I haven't got a clue what the difference is between these scraps of iron. I just want Glenn to have one, something to show our appreciation for all his hard work. Should we send cash?