Followup to the Erickson talk of a few days ago: I've been reading stuff he read at Salon, including a piece where he offhandedly praises The Invisibles, and this piece, http://dir.salon.com/story/sex/feature/2000/08/18/erickson_sanctimony/index.html?sid=965738, where he says something really insightful as an offhanded attack on Peggy Noonan, the woman who came off so impossibly creepy on The Daily Show towards the end of last year.

This is the line: "To an extent this is a victory of ideology itself, of the argument advanced by people like Peggy Noonan that by definition a nonideological man like Clinton has no true principles and thus whatever social justice he speaks for can be dismissed. To an ideologue like Noonan, who shapes the truth to suit her biases, the man who shapes his biases to suit the truth is a nihilist."

This fits in with the awesome Onion A.V. Club interview with Stephen Colbert from two weeks ago, which can be read at http://www.avclub.com/content/node/44705. Stephen Colbert, it should be noted, destroyed Peggy Noonan with nonchalant awesomeness when he interviewed her.