"Remember, Evil will always triumph over Good because Good is stupid"
      -- Dark Helmet, Spaceballs.

Which may explain why the ACLU has launched a prominent ad campaign which features its prominent supporters proclaiming boldly, "I am not an American". The statement is qualified in much smaller type ("... who believes that civil liberties can be neglected, bla bla ...") which some people may actually read, but one suspects those people will mostly be the ones who were already inclined to support the ACLU.

Which brings me to Air America, which I've heard a bit of on rebroadcasts over the weekend. Herewith, a bit of unsolicited advice: there is stuff that belongs on the air, and stuff that does not. For example:

• If you want someone's comment on, say, a new jobs report, but you don't know if they're available, have a producer make the call off the air. Nobody's tuning in to hear Bob Reich's answering machine.
• Trying to find le mot juste is a fine, writerly instinct, but introducing the same clip five different ways, resulting in an intro longer than the clip, is taking it too far. Say your piece once, and be finished.
• If you want to call your friend the dittohead to prove that you can be nice to dittoheads, just place the damn call, talk to the guy, and be nice. Don't spend five minutes of airtime beforehand explaining how you're going to place this phone call to prove that you can be nice to dittoheads.
• Why exactly do you need to prove to America that you can be nice to dittoheads?

That said, Randi Rhodes is damn good.