Are the ones where she tries to educate us on our American history. Here's an example (although I must be a sadist for browsing through her pompous ramblings to get this):

http://letters.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/22/debate/permalink/aae0d970537aa4c638574cb46fbc13b7.html

one reason I still prefer salon to huffpost...

they are now bragging that they were first to investigate Rielle Hunter or whatever her name is. They're bragging about it.

ugh...

please don't forget I didn't just accuse you of hating obama, I accused you of hating him with the fire of a thousand suns.

I love the smell of truth in the morning! Well said, and I agree with your take. The convention will be an opportunity for the Clintons to undermine BO, not elevate him. Let's hope they choose the latter, or at least have it chosen for them by wiser heads, in which case they'll regain some respect lost to them in the past months. The fact that Bill will be headlined at all, with the predictable standing O's when he speaks and the inevitable comparisons between his and BO's "star power", is a tactical blunder in my view on the part of BO's handlers, but perhaps unavoidable in the interest of party unity. Hopefully, it will be offset to a great degree by BO's stadium extravaganza on the last night, when there should be a significant TV audience (I said hopefully). In the end, what matters are the post-Labor Day debates, and the apparent unity that comes out of the convention...the stuff going on now during the summer doldrums will be quickly forgotten.

As for Joan Walsh, anyone who elicits hundreds of comments after she posts is onto something,no question,but by offering this comment board she is affirming its egalitarian purpose, and rendering her own opinions and observations vulnerable to the intense scrutiny and challenge by her readers they indeed receive here. I applaud her for taking that risk, even as I find some of her ideas the predictable product of her near total immersion for years in covering the cesspool that is American politics, and its stars. I think Tom Shales once said, "Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People". A bit hyperbolic, but if even partially true, Joan Walsh and writers like her are the equivalent of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, and we are the great unwashed.......the fans. In the golden age of movies, fans ultimately made or broke a star, and it's no different, all these decades later, in the political universe.

Was it Tom Shales who originally said that? I've always wondered who was the initial source of that quote. Thanks!

Maureen's mad, I tell you, mad as a hatter! I love it!

doloresflower, thanks for that observation.

Awww, stonecutter, are you calling me ugly? That's not as bad as racist, but it's still kinda hurtful.

Being the most sublime and non-rational Fester that I am, I must confess (but not reject nor denounce) that I enjoy corresponding with Maureen. In part because I enjoy the nose tweaking contest, in part because the conversations resemble a garish Tata trunk barreling down the one lane dirt backroads of the Hindu Kush, and because how often does one get to exchange Shakespeare quotes in the War Room?

Taking each utterance of every poster seriously here would be insufferable, and I would soon rename myself Atlas. Better to accept people as they are.

http://www.globosapiens.net/data/gallery/bt/pictures_468/--bhutan--paro--id=39261.jpg

"What you see as playing offensive, we see as playing defensive for a candidate who was facing tremendous odds in getting people to see him as a person and not just a skin. And I'm increasingly unwilling to forgive Bill Clinton for blaming Obama for some of the things I watched him say that did seem insensitive to me. His expectation that everyone must acquit him of any possible mistake or bad intention falls flat when he accuses Obama of having a a horrible intention to "frame" him as a racist. Do you see the power differencial--and how much more powerful Bill Clinton is in this situation and how vulnerable Obama is? Yet Clinton plays the injured party to perfection"

The power differential? Being label a racist enough for even George Bush to come in defense of Bill Clinton does not necessarily put Obama in a vulnerable position. Racism and its connotations are so powerful that people should be really, really careful before pinning such labels on anyone especially public figures.

If you doubt it just listen to Roland Martin, an African-American commentator on cnn who declared that african-americans are so disgusted with Bill Clinton that no black church will welcome him. Nobody challenged him on it. These are the same churches who prayed with Bill Clinton and gave him refuge when Monica Lewinski scandal seemed to engulf him. They forgave him for cheating on his wife but will have nothing to do with him because he said that reporters should look at bigger things when it seemed they had written her wife off? Of course Jesse Jackson with a large African-American turn out had won, and if you want to add when Clinton's wife loses or lost it should not come as a surprise. Even those white folks who had won there had to have african- american backing.

Prior to the arrival of Obama, no one would ever think or even say that Clinton is a racist. There is a reason African-Americans all over including myself love and support the Clintons.They were for racial equality. A good number of prominent African-Americans would have abandoned him had they believed the Jackson statement or his statement that Obama's stand on the war is a fairy tale was a slight on african-americans in general and Obama in particular. What Obama should have done being a man for change was to have come out in public using the memo from whatever junior staff as the backdrop to defend the Clintons at the time the memo was leaked to reporters in order to diffuse the potential future consequences such as the damage to the reputation of a former Democrat president especially among Clinton's core supporters, the african americans. That would have cemented his credentials as an african-American of the post racial era, among a lot of people including Clinton supporters, who does not see things the way other people interprete it. Now our party is poorer for it and he has his work cut out for him in trying to unify the party. It would have been like the Rev. Wright case gone and buried after he had strongly taken a position on it.