"...The obvious thing to do is to withdraw your consent from the situation by refusing to participate. Stop buying the products, stop paying for the paper, stop watching, stop reading. Then the situation will change. When the media begin to develop a product that is worth buying, participate in that, or go ahead and start one of your own..."

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely yes. Yes! I haven't watched television in six years. I quite buying newspapers and the only mags I subscribe to are Harper's and Appalachian Trail Journal.

The media are an addiction. Turn it off, unplug it, stop buying it. That is the most important power you have. Joe Klein, and all the rest, would disappear overnight if they had no audience. We have to make it uncool to buy the crap.

Sitting before your sanity and your wisdom is like a warm lamp on a frosty morning. Not only can I see, I feel better about it.

"If you ask any one of them, they will tell you they are on the good side."

Right. All wars are fought for freedom, liberty, truth and justice. People want to believe in a savior and so the cult of personality thrives, as it always has to one degree or another. There is always an element of religiosity that finally accrues to national leaders no matter who they are or what country they lead. That is true whether one supports or opposes the leader. Most have an overwhelming need to deify, to attribute the source of All Good Things to their chosen leaders, or equally malign their leaders with nefarious intentions. It always turns out to be a mix of the two.

Journalists, good journalists at least, allow us to see these "gods" and "devils" for who they actually are: flesh and blood human beings, albeit ambitious ones. Because one way or the other these politicians would set themselves over us, they deserve to have their beliefs, intentions and records analyzed, criticized, expounded on, exposed. As good journalists go about the work of giving citizen readers the information they need to make informed, clear-eyed assessments of these would-be leaders, the devotees start perceiving slights, hidden endorsements, personal and careerist agendas in the writer's work where in fact none may actually exist. The slightest positive observation is taken as a full fledged endorsement by supporters and naysayers alike. That the journalist or columnist points out that a candidate has a wart on their nose doesn't also mean that they have sprouted horns. (Except for Dick Cheney!)

Not much can be done about this partisanship in the thrall of emotionalism. Human beings being who we are, we're pretty much stuck with it.

Edwards, despite his Senatorial votes in support of the current regime, was at least trying to reconnect the Democratic Party to its blue collar roots. He was up against too many trends and forces to make it stick. 1. Poverty in the U.S. and its causes have been redefined, first by Reagan and then by Clinton to be totally the fault of the poor. 2. The corporate controlled and celebrity obsessed media (peopled with the offspring of the privileged classes) with no interest in his message beyond his wife's health issues and his hair. 3. The potentially historic making Presidency of the first woman or the first African-American. 4. Lack of campaign funds.

As a working class American, and as the son of working class Americans, John Edwards's message resonated with me. I regret I won't be able to vote for him on Feb. 5 but must settle for either Republican Lite or Republican Lite. I will vote for Obama (simply because 4/8 more years of another Clinton makes me sneeze: Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush and now what? Clinton again? Ahhhchooooo!) in the Primary and for whomever ends up being the candidate in the General. At this point in our nation's history, we just simply can not survive another Republican presidency. The Supreme Court, the federal bench, the agencies of the federal government that have fallen into the cesspool of cronyism and incompetence, this god-forsaken war, our reputation in the world...THAT is what is at stake.