KURTZ' CASE. Stanley Kurtz, normally found in a damp bed in NRO's fever ward, sweatily tracking his many homosexual enemies with play-armies on his pillow, has apparently been wheeled to a nearby window, the autumn light from which seems to have dissipated his dark mania, albeit briefly.

Today he talks about how polarized we are as a nation. I like this game and I know how to play. I even take Kurtz' point that there seem to be many more full-throated political tracts, liberal and conservative, on the bestseller lists than ever before, and that this may imply a more politicized general public. I don't agree with him, of course -- by his logic, that recent era in which only rightwing tomes like The Way Things Ought To Be and Bias clogged the charts implied that we all of us went solidly right-wing for a couple of years -- but at least I can take him seriously...

...and then, alas! He devotes the last half his post to the Dixie Chicks. "The gulf between country fans who see the Chicks’ remarks as dishonorable," he writes, "and the Chicks themselves... shows that we are dealing with a cultural chasm." This isn't the first time he's dealt with the Chicks -- he previously questioned whether Natalie Maines was of Dixie at all, as a true DC would not impugn her President ("I would like her to try to make things right," he also whispered urgently). But it is the first time he has credited the popular singing group with world-historical importance.

Well, it's progress, anyway.