Bob Herbert usually bores the hell out of me, even though I generally agree with what he has to say. There's a certain kind of writing about social injustice that makes social injustice seem like the most soporific subject in the world (see also: anything I write about social injustice). Today, however, his lifeless prose actually works to the benefit of his subject, which is the absolutely appalling behavior of the Republican party and its varied constituents. I'm not sure why this should be controversial, and I'm not sure when we decided that rather than castigating these poisonous actions we would just throw up our hands and say, "Well, [...]

I read Bob Herbert's column in the Times today-which once again expresses his continuing disgust with Wall Street and the way our financial system is rigged to protect the most wealthy-in the same way I read all of Bob Herbert's columns: in a detached, world-weary, "yeah, whatever, hippie" mood. "I'm amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage," writes Bob, and my immediate reaction is, really, you are? We hate poor people in this country and venerate the most obscene exemplars of greed. We've spent the last thirty years being stunned into a stupor of consumption and impossible dreams of our [...]