After listening to John Kerry's acceptance address...I did a little experiment. ... I edited out phony religiosity and pointless political platitudes of the sort that could be used by any politician in any situation, including Hitler (i.e., We're the optimists"). I also chopped out all gratuitous flag-waving all forced and hollow tough-talking, and all draping of the clearly unworthy self in the ill-fitting cloak of the great figures of history. Further down the line were the intellectual crimes. Lies went out right away, but I also cut out things that were not lies exactly, but mere words. Also banished were the many species of literary fraud -- from facile generalizations to redundancies to such crass, hypersentimental, factory-generated cliches as 'trees [are] the cathedrals of nature.' There were also many shades of disingenuousness to deal with, most of which came into play when Kerry levied attacks against George Bush. ... When I was done cutting, there were only two lines left. 'I was born in Colorado. America can do better. Amen'. " --Matt Taibbi