Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

We may never be rid of this @#$%^& controversy over THE ERIC SEVAREID OF COMEDY, but at least Richard Cohen's brain is still brightly on:

What to make of all this? First, it's not about Colbert. His show has an audience of about 1 million -- not exactly "American Idol" numbers. [Actually, ERIC's numbers have gone up; but they're still not American Idol numbers. --ED.] Second, it marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media: We give you our e-mail addresses and then, in theory, we have this nice chat. Forget about it. Not only is e-mail too often a kind of epistolary spitball, but there's no way I can even read the 3,506 e-mails now backed up in my queue -- seven more since I started writing this column.

But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

The only answer to this and future ERIC SEVAREIDS OF COMEDY is to SHUT DOWN the White House Correspondents' annual orgy of self-congratulation. There'll be no ERICs, and happily, our contempt for the Beltway will live on.