IT'S NOT CULTURAL WARS...
(Saturday) Joe Klein in Time says that the real problem is that Americans are addicted to shock. "In fact, the Culture War isn't really a war; it's more a public entertainment, a Culture Circus. Wars require combatants. The general public is not up in arms but plastered in armchairs, occasionally roused to flaccid pique by a handful of show-biz gladiators -- Rosie O'Donnell, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Jerry Falwell -- who fight carefully selected papier-mache lions."