The trouble with Paine is that he makes the rest of the founding fathers look bad. He makes all the excuses made on their behalf about slavery and elitism and snobbery and sexism look halfassed. And although modern Tories of all stripes-from Reaganite Republicans to wild-eyed right-wing libertarians-have claimed Paine as their own, in the end Paine is the American revolutionary who can’t be defanged, forced into a business suit, swathed in a flag, shrink-wrapped and sold to the masses as a Stepford revolutionary.

The sad thing about “Black Hate Radio” is that it doesn’t strike me as too different from much of what is on the am dial throughout the nation, and please note the Clear Channel connection here.

How the Mid East Demagouges created a Cartoon Riot, months after the cartoons were actually published. For what it’s worth: The Iranian newspaper’s contest for cartoons about the Holocaust has had it’s first entry… the absurdly redundant solicitation of anti-semitic editorial cartoons.

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