> Somebody:
>
> "There's always been an element of melodrama and theater on the left. West
> is no more silly than the anti-globalization protesters carrying paper-mache
> dolls or the Palestinian activists who painted themselves like characters
> from the movie Avatar to highlight the Israeli occupation."
>
> Exactly. Let a thousand performances bloom.
>
Me three. I can't bear the music, but I think he successfully connects, at least in his writing and perhaps also in speaking, with a lot of people in ways that are good (as Somebody essentially says above). And again, I'm inclined to think that this is mainly with religious people (I'm not saying all of them), but that is a complete guess with no statistical data supporting it. Maybe it's a matter of the right cliché in the right way at the right time, but my own feeling is that it's more substantive than that.
j