Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

• Why Jon Carroll is great:

  I'm also grumpy about Sarah Palin, but what's the point? Not a single mind will be changed by discussing her latest idiocy. Let those who support her continue to support her; I have every confidence that they will reap exactly what they sow. Plant poison ivy, get poison ivy.

• Arthur Silber on Wikileaks and values and implications and we're-in-trouble.

  Do you have any doubt -- any doubt at all -- that many or even most of the same people who criticize WikiLeaks for its "irresponsibility" in allegedly providing support for those who seek still more war would herald WikiLeaks for its heroism and history-changing courage? That the same people would ceaselessly praise WikiLeaks as a unique and uniquely far-seeing and groundbreaking force for peace? I certainly don't.

  and

  But the WikiLeaks revolution goes far beyond that, and much deeper. The precision of its aim is revealed by the great discomfort experienced even by many of those one might have expected to be sympathetic to WikiLeaks' efforts. A closely related aspect of our training to rely on authority and obey is that we are taught to value control. The idea of losing control is deeply unnerving to many of us, which is why that became the title of a separate essay in the WikiLeaks series (and that's my personal favorite among those articles, for whatever that may be worth).

  (Two different essays. Yes, they are long and detailed.)
  
• DBK at skippy suggests something I've suspected for a long time: We need aspirational music. With videos (Sly & the Family Stone, Bill Withers).
• Cartoon.
• Terrance of Republic of T is creating a comic strip!