a compliment to lj  Friday, October 29, 2004  The New Yorker:
The Choice  (This has been one of the greatest editorial
articles I've ever read.)  by The Editors Issue of 2004-11-01
Posted 2004-10-25  This Presidential campaign has been as ugly
and as bitter as any in American memory. The ugliness has flowed
mostly in one direction, reaching its apotheosis in the effort,
undertaken by a supposedly independent group financed by friends
of the incumbent, to portray the challenger--who in his mid-
twenties was an exemplary combatant in both the Vietnam War and
the movement to end that war--as a coward and a traitor. The
bitterness has been felt mostly by the challenger's adherents;
yet there has been more than enough to go around. This is one
campaign in which no one thinks of having the band strike up
"Happy Days Are Here Again."  The heightened emotions of the
race that (with any luck) will end on November 2, 2004, are
rooted in the events of three previous Tuesdays. On Tuesday,
November 7, 2000, more than a hun