Now, for a sec, I'll assume that you're really an Irishwoman and I'll ask accordingly: "What's your purpose? You're rarely nice and generally imperial. Do you love conflict?"

You see, I like conflict, but I also like to laugh with people and love them and I do all that at Salon, but you're so singularly strident.

"What's your payoff?"

Of course, if you're a guy in a basement in Georgia, you're likely dreadfully bored and fighting is the only human contact you've got.

Whatever, watch those prepositions!

With Mau Mau as my witness, I declare thee to be a minion!

Rise!

Uh, er, I mean, grovel!*

*I hope my uncertainty here can be forgiven. I've never had my very own minion. I will love him and hug him and take him home and call him George!** George from KY!

**Yes, a Bugs Bunny reference. I know, I know. I'm a maroon.

I don't blame them.

Nice analysis, Mr. Leonard.

I can't believe it! You made me laugh! I didn't think you had it in ya, old girl, but I'm glad you do.

@ Paul in KY

I don't know what to do. Mau Mau self-deprecated. No reason to loose our cannons when she turned her cannons on herself, you know. We won't need a broadside just now, but be steady and ready, my loyal minion!

I had the same response. Growing up on my block, there was an older kid with a shock box. We lined up to get shocked. It was the buzzing badge of courage.

It amazes me that Palin is even supported by people. She doesn't read. She rejects science. She not talk so pretty.

And the economy is so complex and such a mess. Why do people want the incuriosity and bumbling of Bush and the machinations of Cheney?

Palin did the same thing, but on a more monstrous scale, visiting Ground Zero and then disparaging the East Coast elite who died on 9-11, who picked body parts out of the rubble, who buried their dead, and began life again.

Palin.

Coulter.

What's the diff?

I can imagine some of you who posted at a funeral. *

You'd say about the corpse, "He's fakin'."

You'd whine, "Hey, where's the food?!?"

You'd declare, "Why don't they post the will at these things? I want to see my cut."

You'd say to the widow, "Hey, Toots, you don't look any better than your hubby."

* Which is what this is.

As far as candor, Tinwoman, what's your name? Your phone number? Your address? Do tell us about your sex fantasies! Hey, what's your credit card debt? Your credit card...number? Whom have you betrayed? Tell, tell, tell!!!! Give me a good interview!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You've done well, Mr. Breathed, as a cartoonist, a respondent, and a citizen. You've conducted more current, albeit cultural, than the Grand Canyon and a high voltage line combined, and you maintained some boundaries, which is wise. I wish you the very best.

If I'd been Oliver Stone, I would have inserted a national debt ticker beneath the film's images and I also would have inserted, between sips of soda in the torture discussing scene, images of naked, hungry, cold men being tortured.

You bet I overreact.

Et tu.

Here's proof: "...attention-trolling and fan-chain-jerking...."

As far as it being a death, it is the death of a strip, the ending of his Salon association, and perhaps the termination of his time as a cartoonist.

It's both ironic and predictable that Mr. Breathed would offer coarse discourse as the reason for his leaving and that the discourse in this thread is often coarse. So, you don't like his strip? So what? Who cares? He's leaving and decency suggests you bite your tongue and that doesn't work, bite it off.

Mr. Breathed has endured more criticism than scores of the average Salon poster and he's endured it for the sake of liberal politics. Leave the loathing of him to the neocons, at least at this moment, which might be his final farewell. To assume that he's manipulative and attention-seeking is a deeply cynical position, or, as Obama noted in the final debate, might reveal more about the accuser than the accused.

"...conservative artists...."?

There's no such thing. Art demands creativity. It challenges the status quo. You are the status quo. And you certainly don't challenge yourselves.

I think all you guys could manage is to say what's in your hearts: First Ni**er

Biblically speaking, just about everybody is an adulterer, since the contemplation of sin equals the commission of sin and what spouse hasn't married one half of Brangelina? Bible thumpers don't like to contemplate contemplative sin. Likewise, they don't like to contemplate what the Bible says about wealth. It's all distraction. The Earth is about to bake us. We've borrowed ourselves into impending national poverty. We torture. We elect belly-up-to-the-bar presidents and nominate hockey moms cum beauty queens for vice president.