Politics or performance art?

I am still, some days, surprised that Glenn Beck is real. Or rather, not surprised that he's real, but surprised that he's real and is given air time. I mean, a lot of people, present company included, have mental illnesses, but they don't stick me on the telly.

I take these moments of befuddlement as good signs that I'm not completely cynical.

But really. I can't believe that the political discourse has sunk that low. (There's lower, of course—see Uganda, but Uganda is really the fault of American interference and it's part of the same problem.) Say what you like about the Cold War, but when I was growing up, there was a little bit of reality mixed in with the hot air. Now it's impossible to tell a well-compensated media pundit from the guy with the goiter who hangs out across from Dundas Square gibbering about Jesus.