By the way, if Richard Cohen of The Washington Post thinks he's run into a lynch mob because a few people have sent him angry e-mails about the column he wrote last week, let me just point out that six months from now he'll almost certainly still have his job, unlike certain people I could name who said and did "the wrong things" in the current climate.

(I really wish we could drop the subject of Stephen Colbert altogether -- I thought he was funny, other people didn't for whatever reason, the routine wouldn't have toppled the regime regardless of the reaction, so let's move on. But Cohen takes the Colbert debate back into the mainstream-media realm, using it as an excuse to suggest that left-wing anger is dangerous in a way right-wing anger somehow is never seen to be. "The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle"? Maybe, maybe not -- but if you think Republicans are immune to that sort of thing, Richard, let's just see what happens to GOP candidates in '08 who support a route to legalization for undocumented immigrants, to name just one issue on which "the Republican middle," such as it is, is extremely vulnerable.)

****

ON THE OTHER HAND: Barbara has some good thoughts about Cohen and the usefulness of anger.