Hey listen, I'm no Condi fan. I'd like to pack Bush, Cheney, Condi, Rove, Gonzales, Goodling, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and all the flacks at FOX News into a tiny space capsule and send them about five galaxies over.

But if Condi wants to see a ballgame, have a couple hot dogs, do the wave, she should be able to do so without Joan Walsh writing as though Hannibal Lecter sat in front of her.

Imagine that, Condi Rice went to a baseball game!

The one thing you can be sure of with Hannibal: he discriminates. No wanton mass-murder for him. Plus, you know when he's eating your liver, a good wine will accompany the meal.

All Condi does is oversee mindless acts of slaughter at the behest of her "husband." Booing is too good for her.

As for Bush being a good baseball commissioner? Even compared to the ridiculous performance of Selig, Bush would be a side-grade at best. But good? I don't think so.

Condi Rice booed at a ballgame in San Francisco?!? How can that be? I'm shocked! Shocked I say!

The people at the ballpark were not 'real Americans', but Al Qaeda terrorists in disguise. These are the same impostors who are screwing with our polls and who voted the Democratic congress in. I just wonder where all the real Americans have gone...

you are a vindictive, gossiping, jealous harpie.

I'm so glad you get to sit where the owners sit.

some folks say she'd make a good commissioner

More like Condi would make a good commissar!

She really missed her calling, that wayward scholar of the Soviet Union. I guess that's why she got busy helping rekindle the totalitarian spirit of the Bolsheviks in the Bush Administration, just to make herself more comfortable.

So glad she enjoys baseball. So does Castro. Too bad he's too sick to show up at games these days. I'm sure they could swap stories while sitting in the fancy seats.

The common expression, "ballpark figure" when trying to judge how much something may cost in this case has a ring of irony to it.

Condi plunked her skinny ass into a seat "for a couple of innings" that has a list-price ticket stub value of $575 (Home dugout to behind home plate up to row 8). If she did have an ordinary hot dog, it cost more than $7, not including the cost of a Secret Service man to go and get it for her. When's the last time you spent $575 for a ticket, showed up late and walked out early. Her imperial highness can't even respect the game enough to sit through to the Seventh Inning Stretch?

But I doubt any money was ever exchanged. After all, AT&T and the Giants would never allow the Future Commissioner of Baseball to pay anything.

Like everything in Condi's life, as America's symbol of a "good" black person, hoisted high by white corporate benefactors to show they ain't prejudiced, she's never paid for a damned thing.

Major League Baseball is an industry that serves America's desperate need to cling to something that disappeared long ago, but no one will admit it. MLB creates and sells nostalgia for a simpler time that may have once existed, but sure is long-gone now.

There's nothing "American" about MLB. Unless someone's idea of America is a billion-dollar Disneyland stadium named after one mega-corporation after another.

The stadium where Condi parked her pampered butt was originally Pacific Bell Park, a name that San Franciscans never came to love as much as "Candlestick."

But if they did take to "Pac Bell Park" their new name loyalty was short-lived when Pac Bell Park was renamed SBC Park after SBC Communications Inc. acquisition of Pacific Bell.

But alas, no sooner than San Francisco baseball fans managed to swallow that indigestible name, the Corporatists yanked down that sign and put up "SBC Park." What the hell does "SBC" stand for? Don't ask.

So fans choked down another degrading corporate slogan for a ball field's name and moved on. But now it's AT&T Park and they don't even blink at what the new name is, or even look back with fondness with the forgotten "SBC Park" or the "Pac Bell Park."

What does all this have to do with Condi? Well, in a way America is a big corporate-run ballpark now. The name on the stadium changes and nobody pays much attention. The "truth" changes and nobody pays much attention. The meaning of things is what ever it is today, but may not be tomorrow, nor what we remembered the meaning to be several years ago.

What do Barry Bonds and the hot dog that Condi probably didn't eat, and MLB have in common: They are all plumped up on artificial ingredients. The "old ball game" is played in places that look like giant pinball machines. People with dough come to the ballpark not so much to see the game, but to be seen on the big digitized billboard.

This is SUCH a way more important story than the Democrats complete betrayal of their electoral base with their cave-in on Iraq funding! Thanks for posting it! When can we expect to hear similar important and juicy tidbits about Paris Hilton's jail time?

Jesus Christ, what a shell game. I expect better from Salon.

Two years ago, my BF and I took in a game at RFK for the Washington "First in war; First in peace; and last in the American League!" Nationals. The MC annouces that the VIP to throw out the first pitch was Alberton Gonzales. The entire stadium erupted in boos!

I love Washington!!!

When I glanced at the title, I thought it read, taking her OUT of the game, as in the plan to make her the next vice-president, and immunize Bush against impeachment. This was widely reported in the major news mags, that the Republicans were thinking of dumping Dick and promoting Condi.

The reasoning behind this is sound enough. She has a double coat of teflon armor, being black and female, any criticism of her is automatically deflected as bias on one of two counts. Secondly she has ice in her veins, did anyone hear her call George Tenet a 'public servant', after that dustup.

Naturally the battle to establish her credentials, through public appearances and so forth, has been met by a rash of criticism, some old, some new, from those Democrats who are close enough to get a faint whiff of the impeachment perfume, and realize that getting there is a lot like the Hollywood Squares game show, with Condi Rice to block.

The rules of succession allow for Condi to be appointed VP, and not all that unlikely. Who would have thought a funding bill for Iraq with no timetable for withdrawal, could get past the Democrats in Congress?

As part of the media blitz, she was at Camp Pendelton yesterday. If you are a Republican hopeful you better pose with the troops. Naturally being President, did I say being President?, requires a certain public prescence, and her persona as bitchy little princess could play either way, once Americans come to grips with her acid personality. Let's leave that to the media spin doctors, and Chris Matthews, who will give it an official "so what."

There's a lot more going on here, than a ball game. Is Willie Mays a Republican? There aren't too many black Republicans, but the Right Wing press has every one of them on speed dial. It remains to see how the Liberals would classify her, the anti-Obama? And possibly this is only being done to counter the press madam Speaker receives, and to point out that they have a plan for succession too. They better.