...and cut to Teusday. Oh, and please keep the punditry, at this point its just a redundancy.

I'm not exactly sure who 'most of the people' are that Joan Walsh professes to speak for. Obama's neatly brushed the dirt off his shoulder...no stumbling there. And BTW...what's with the vanity video thing?? Barack Obama at his most tired is way better than Walsh's fake teleprompted monotone super-imposed on cheesy music.

You must know by now that AKA has staked out the letters section as her turf.

Don't you have some kids you should be shooing off your lawn?

My earlier mention of problems the millenial generation have in higher education today and my mention of narcissism in connection with that generation and your return post to me prompted me to do a bit of searching and I came up with some interesting links:

How to teach them:

http://conference.unctlt.org/proposals/presentations/conf4/838_Millennial%20Generation%20Tra.ppt#18

A study that offers you more information than you need to know:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:9H1J2Zel5aMJ:www.joshuadfoster.com/fostercampbelltwenge2003jrp+narcissism+%22Jean+M.+Twenge%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=17&gl=us

The pro and con of it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/fashion/17narcissism.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

An interesting blog post:

http://genme.livejournal.com/

Blog with a list of “Generation Me” characteristics:

http://classact.prblogs.org/2007/06/01/10-characteristics-of-generation-me/

In that last link, you will find many traits of Obama himself. The author of Generation Me, Jean M. Twenge links the Y and X generations together as far as narcissism goes. Of course, the causes may be traced to baby boomer parents who wanted to correct the parently failures that they saw in their own parents. They overcorrected and hence the resulting narcissistic-like behavior.

Two caveats. First, younger people are naturally more narcissistic than older people in every generation. Many personality disorders mellow out with time. In fact, I once had a psychiatrist tell me that it was almost impossible to diagnose NPD in teenagers, so common was these behaviors. Second, a mild NPD due to cultural or parenting factors would be nothing compared to a serious case of NPD. Those cases can result in behaviors that often are very much like the behavior of sociopaths.

It is interesting that Twenge and Campbell seem to believe that NPD can be culturally caused. The trend is going the other way, with many in the mental health community now saying that some Personality Disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder having a heritable factor.

The sad thing is that people misunderstand narcissism, thinking that these people have an excess of vanity and confidence, when actually most sufferers end up in extreme doubt and are prone to depression.

The sense of entitlement when it comes to grades and the cheating and plagiarizing behavior that has been well-documented as increasing with each generation is something of a mystery. No doubt some would attribute it to a lack of grounding in old-fashioned morals. You see it when people are caught. "No big deal" is a common response.

Also, Salon needs to stop doing the brick wall videos. Most of your staff, no matter how camera ready they may seem, are far better writing words than presenting them. Even the most insightful text or voice only work can seem shallow when a face is added. Plus the current cheap production flatters no one. If Salon must do videos, find a more compelling visual context thn someone awkwardly reciting their work.

I wholeheartedly agree. Salon's video production standards are about as low as their editorial standards of late. See my previous reference to "third-rate progressive news and views site."

On the bright side, having Joan already up against the wall will save some time when the revolution comes.

I am not suggesting that Hillary supporters are oppressors -- you came up with that one on your own.

What I am saying is that, call it Freudian projection or what you want, many people on both sides see what is done to them, but rarely what they do -- by the looks of it you, shallowtruth are one such person.

You have lunatic bomb throwers on the Hillary and Obama side (and a few Republican trolls "stirring it up") who consistently accuse the other side of outrageous behavior. The latest on the Clinton side is someone called ProudTexasGirl (though I really suspect she is a Republican.) manos99 strikes me as the Obama side equivalent.

But it is an interesting meme -- oppressors fell oppressed - the NAZI's justified themselves by reference to the Bolshevik-Zionist conspiracy -- and they actually believed it!! Political extremes persuade themselves that they are oppressed. Extreme Clinton supporters see hidden sexism in every critique, Extreme Obama hidden racism (by the way that is not to say that there is not sexism and racism, it just does not explain everything.)

It is all a strange lunacy. I see the Clinton camp as having persuaded themselves that the Obama side are playing so dirty that they need to respond in kind -- that they are provoked to go there, to throw the"kitchen sink." Again and again you will see wails from the Clinton side of how awful the Obama camp are, but little introspection.

You may not see my point, but frankly, I still think that some of the so-caller Hillary supporters and Obama supporters are nothing of the sort. To put it simply I cannot see how enthusiastic race-baiters such as say SeanWhiteMale could possibly be Clinton supporters - if you know what Hillary stands for it is impossible to believe that the more outrageous so called Hillary supporters here could possibly actually be Hillary backers -- and so I have concluded that they are "shit-stirrers" and probably Republicans in disguise -- of course a few extremists could just be deranged into thinking they were helping the campaign of Hillary or Obama.

Finally, as far as Joan Walsh is concerned, she is just a sad case, someone whose backing for one camp is transparent, but who, presumably to stay inside her job description maintains that she is neutral. The position is just silly, and the contempt for readers obvious.