And I’m also very pleased that Edwards has hung on to his delegates rather than supporting someone else at this stage. I hope he horse-trades them in a useful way.

Wren – Don’t be ashamed. The big shot media types like Tim Russert and Wolf Blitzer and Bob Woodward aren’t really your colleagues. They are people who work for large corporations. The sole goal of corporations is to make more and more money, period. If the corporation happens to be a newspaper chain or a television or cable network, the name of the game is more viewers or more readers. They pay the “talent” huge amounts of money, to which the talent is thoroughly addicted. They will do nothing to jeopardize their salaries. Really. Nothing.

Your true colleagues work in relative obscurity, at weekly rags and muckraking web sites, for little or no money. They seek truth and justice, and they are outraged. Most have fewer than a hundred readers/viewers, compared to the tens of millions who tune in to the vacuous Katy Couric each evening. You have to look hard to find them, and when you do, everyone will laugh at you for reading, because they challenge the big accepted corporate world-view and so they must be, at best, deranged, if not outright treasonous. They write with moral certainty, but they have few resources — newswires, government insiders, police informants, etc. — and so it’s easy for them to make factual mistakes. But they are what’s left of the true journalists of the past, and I love them.

As a journalist, I’ve been deeply ashamed of my colleagues for their sloppiness and willingness to pander and take steno notes for publication. It disgusts me that while the nation fixates on poor Heath Ledger’s untimely death, we lost 28 more soldiers in Iraq in January. Each of them were volunteers, bravely fighting Bush’s (and McCain’s, it seems) Endless War. No one seems to notice those deaths, which were equally as devastating to their families and friends as Ledger’s was, and just as shocking and senseless. It’s as if America has its collective fingers in its ears and is yelling “La la la la I can’t HEAR you!” when it comes to Iraq. I think we’re in deep, deep, shamed denial.

OK, I’ll stop ranting now. Great series of posts, you’ve written here. I miss John Edwards, too, but I’ll support one or the other of the two still competing for the Democratic nomination. Haven’t quite decided yet. My fear: If the Dems don’t win this election somehow (and they’re such wimps it’s possible they COULD lose, in spite of everything), I think America truly is doomed. It doesn’t matter so much for me — I’m old. But for my daughter, and the generations coming up behind her, it’s tragic.