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Thread's old, but I did want to add this: I couldn't disagree more with Janeane Garofalo if I was a Professional Disagreer with a PhD in Disagreeing from the finest Disagreement University in the land -- *but* -- at least she had the ovaries to climb down out her Ivory Tower and show up on Fox. It's a shame. Garofalo has delivered great performances, and even some of her standup I think is alright (and standup is grueling work -- so I give her another slight notch of respect, which is that she really did put in her hours working the circuit and refining her material), but now I can't flip on anything with her in it without getting annoyed at her. Anyway, point is, I doubt Richard Gere and Sean Penn etc etc would have had the balls to show up. They'd rather hide out and preach to the choir. So, Janeane may be fabulously WRONG, but at least she showed up.

Where have all the good liberals gone? I mean, they're all fantastically wrong, but f'r'instance, out here in MA in the old days when our liberal governors actually ran as liberal governors...Dukakis, contrary to what the press used to say about him ("politically savvy but a personality dud") I found to be the exact opposite; in fact, he managed to charm a family of three conservatives (this was back when a...relation of mine...was doing work on a show called "The Advocates" on PBS...anybody remember that one?). Incredibly cheap, though, he was. I recall a story about him and Keriotis...I *think* it was Keriotis...he offered to take him out to lunch and he'd "pick up the tab" -- and the Duke took him down to a hot dog stand. ;-)

In a way, I mourn the passing of Donahue's relevancy. Where there used to be liberals of conscience -- albeit misguided in their information and opinions -- all over the place, there are now liberals of convenience, "lifestyle liberals" (liberal because it's hip and acceptable), celiberals (Garofalo being both a lifestyle lib and celib), and people who aren't liberal but rather are just completely filled with hate against anybody who's conservative, which they somehow think qualifies them as a liberal (the former bunch being the most prevalent).

I mean, where's the fun in engaging in lively debate with your "enemy" when your enemy is...no longer capable of reasonable discourse? When nobody is even LISTENING to your "enemy" (for rhetorical debate purposes)? I often fear the current disarray of the Dems will lead us 'Pubs into starting to tear into each other over our single-issue pet peeves since we all love debate and we can't find much worthwhile with the liberals.

There are a few left I respect. Since we're patting Fox and Brian Kilmeade on the back, I'll also go ahead and give Alan Colmes a pat on the back. He's affable, smart, informed, and, of course, completely wrong, but able to laugh it off easily and still manages to connect with a viewer/listener on some level. Or, to rephrase: "I don't run for the remote control like I do when I see Susan Sarandon being interviewed."

Perhaps the libs forgot how to debate after so many years in power. I pray it doesn't happen to us.