Rehashing The Commentariat

Marc Dumouchel and various members of the POlloI have been trading comments amongst themselves with respect to, well, comments. I think my position on elitism and framing discussion in the way in which we choose has been adequately explored (supra etc.), so I'll only add one note: one of the wonderful things about the diversity of opinion that we have here is that we have (as far as I know) no 'house policy' on what can be said: if you convince any of the POlloI that your commentary's interesting and/or useful enough to be posted, it'll show up here.

Now, on to some other observations:

• Mosquitoes bite. In both the stunningly-obvious and the vernacular senses of the term "bite".
• Bill Clinton's speech (or see the QuickTime video) to the Democratic National Convention was an amazing piece of oratory. Note particularly the use of "Send me!" as a theme, and the echoing back to the Constitution's preamble in the repetition of "a more perfect union" as the goal to which Kerry/Edwards would set forth. I know Mr. Hirji is rather less bullish on the speech than I am, so perhaps he'll set out his views on this point later.
• I strongly commend the Gerry Mulligan recordings available through the Library of Congress's I Hear America Singing project.

I'll have some substantive posts coming up shortly. Really.