Quick! Pick one!: Obama and ClintonNo time to read The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the Sunday New York Times, Harpers, The Nation, The New Republic, and New York Magazine during your morning commute? Don’t worry – "How To Sound Smart This Week" will provide the Cliff's Notes.

With Super Tuesday rapidly approaching, chances are good that you’ll have to talk politics this week. For the Democratically inclined, it used to be really easy to bluff your way into a political discussion: express warm feelings towards John Edwards, thereby throwing the Hilary vs. Obama binary into a tailspin. Unfortunately, Edwards dropped out of the campaign, so now you have to pick a side. Even if you don’t know your own mind, though, plenty of major news publications seem to know if for you, especially if you’re a lady.

In this week’s New York Times Magazine, Linda Hirshman looks at the conventional wisdom that women will vote for Hilary. There’s a lot to discuss here, like the frustrating fact that women are way less informed than men about politics. A recent poll suggests that this is because there are so many more male journalists and politicians. When women can’t find anyone to identify with, they lose interest -- whereas in elections with female candidates, they’re more likely to get involved. If you don’t mind heated debate, this is a pretty excellent topic of conversation. Is it reasonable to check out when you’re not included in the conversation? Or is that a cop-out?

According to Newsweek, it’s simply how the brain works. An article on the neuroscience behind voting points out that our gut instinct propel us to vote for people who are like us – e.g. women for Hilary – but adds that identification is highly fluid. It mentions an oft-cited study in which Asian girls who were reminded of their gender before a math test scored poorly, but those reminded of their ethnicity scored well. In other words, we tend to act according to the stereotypes the world has about us. Which suggests, in turn (as you might point out) that women are less enthusiastic about politics because they’re not expected to be – a vicious cycle, sure, but definitely a cycle that can be broken.

Meanwhile, over at The Nation, veteran feminist Katha Pollitt casts her support behind Obama. Pollitt is the definition of an informed voter, but the argument she makes is entirely emotional: “Let's go with the candidate voters feel some passion about."

Lastly, if the conversation turns into a swamp of pure political ambivalence, bring up today’s Salon essay by Rebecca Traister. No factoids or chewed-over science here – just pure commiseration with voters who still haven't managed to pick a side.

Last week: The sub-prime meltdown

The carnivore's dilemma: Is eating meat really ethically better than, um, puppy love?Welcome to Bad Advice, a weekly column looking at the misguided guidance of the Internet’s agony aunts.

Salon readers: They may be vicious in the comments section, but they write good letters. This week, Cary Tennis counsels a smart but learning-disabled kid who’s had to fight his way to a good education and now worries that he can’t hack law school. At 1160 words, the letter is a personal essay, and the advice feels superfluous—a guy who can write this well ought to do fine.

At Slate, an Obama campaign worker complains that her grandfather spams his e-mail list with anti-Muslim propaganda about her candidate. Prudie advises her to politely inform the whole e-mail list that Obama is a Christian. At which I’m sure they’ll all breathe a sigh of relief, thrilled to know that we’re not at risk of electing a non-Christian president. Because that would be un-American.

I would so much rather have a beer-drinking grandma than a bigoted grandpa, but Miss Manners doesn’t seem to agree, counseling that it’s rude for a septuagenarian to drink beer out of the bottle in public. Jezebel quite rightly calls her out.

As usual, though, only Savage Love provides any real ethical fireworks. Dan Savage has gone on record against bestiality, but he changes his mind—sort of—in response to a pitiful letter from a guy who only responds to furry love (or, as he puts it, “it's clear what turns my head when I walk down the street and it's never the person holding the leash.”) The letter-writer isn’t proposing doing anything painful to the dog of his dreams – quite the opposite, actually – so, as a meat eater, Savage doesn’t think he can condemn him. Peter Singer would be proud.

Previously:
Lisa Loeb Says "Don't Call Chabadniks Parasites"
Bad Advice

This was Reuel Marc Gerecht a month ago:

America's unilateral efforts, particularly its use of the international financial system to block Iran's access to dollars and credit, have proved more successful than many thought possible. But without greater international support, they probably won't force Tehran to moderate its behavior. The Europeans, who are among Iran's largest trading partners, must agree to biting measures—something these states, which are as addicted to noncoercive diplomacy as they are to commerce, seem unlikely to do. In the meantime, the diplomatic process over Iran's nukes will crawl forward or stagnate but is unlikely to lead to war.

Now here's Steve Clemmons today:

Bush is aware that America's intelligence on Iran is weak. Even without admitting America's blind spots on Iraq, the intelligence failures on Iraq's WMD program create a formidable credibility hurdle.

Bush knows that the American military is stretched and that bombing Iran would not be a casual exercise. Reprisals in the Gulf toward U.S. forces and Iran's ability to cut off supply lines to the 160,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq could seriously endanger the entire American military.

Bush can also see China and Russia waiting in the wings, not to promote conflict but to take advantage of self-destructive missteps that the United States takes that would give them more leverage over and control of global energy flows. Iran has the third-largest undeveloped oil reserves in the world and the second-largest undeveloped natural gas reserves.

Bush also knows that Iran controls "the temperature" of the terror networks it runs. Bombing Iran would blow the control gauge off, and Iran's terror networks could mobilize throughout the Middle East, Afghanistan and even the United States.

Call it the Iraq Syndrome.

And the fact that the Pentagon has isolated 20,000 military targets inside Iran is only alarming if one forgets NORAD and the cold war.

RELATED: Why We Won't Bomb Iran (Part I) [Shvitz]

Well, I mean to say, really. When I solicited satiric obituaries on the political life of Karl Rove, I expected the rusty boilerplate to be pressed by Henrick Hertzberg of the New Yorker, not by Sidney Blumenthal of the Clinton White House and Salon.com. (Sid's stuff has always navigated that narrow guardrail separating hyperbole from hysteria, so it's almost too easy to select him for your favorite Beltway gush.)

Not only did Blumenthal snag my original headline -- "We'll go no more a-rovin'" -- he even improved upon my list of verboten terms for describing Rove. We get "Machiavelli" (albeit in quote by someone else) and instead of "motherfucker" there's "rat fucker" and "political serial killer."

Rove's merger of politics and policy was an effort to forge a total one-party state. While he is acclaimed as a political strategist, his true innovation was in governing. He sought to subordinate the entire federal government to his goal of creating a permanent Republican majority. Every department and agency has been subject to an intense and thorough politicization. Indeed, Rove's ambitious plan was tantamount to a proto-Sovietization. Even science has been suppressed in the name of the party line, recalling the Lysenko episode. Cheney and Rove acted as the pincers of the unitary executive. While Cheney sought to concentrate unaccountable power in the presidency, Rove brought down the anvil of politics on the professional career staff.

Actually, the Lynsenko episode was a case of science hewing ridiculously close to the party line, but no matter. Sid had me at "proto-Sovietization."

Goodness. The day Max Blumenthal has to put in a call to dad to suggest that maybe, you know, he ought to tone it down a bit is the day the Democrats take all.

I know she would be too modest to write this herself, but this Salon essay on the art of editing applies to Jewcy in the following way: It's a lung-filled tribute to our Features Editor Izzy Grinspan:

In any case, real editing is something different. It takes place before a piece ever sees the light of day -- and it's this kind of painstaking, word-by-word editing that so much online writing needs. If learning how to be edited is a form of growing up, much of the blogosphere still seems to be in adolescence, loudly affirming its identity and raging against authority. But teenagers eventually realize that authority is not as tyrannical and unhip as they once thought. It's edited prose, with its points sharpened by another, that will ultimately stand the test of time. There is a place for mayfly commentary, which buzzes about and dies in a day. But we don't want to get to the point where the mayflies and mosquitoes are so thick that we can't breathe or think.

The art of editing is running against the cultural tide. We are in an age of volume; editing is about refinement. It's about getting deeper into a piece, its ideas, its structure, its language. It's a handmade art, a craft. You don't learn it overnight. Editing aims at making a piece more like a Stradivarius and less like a microchip. And as the media universe becomes larger and more filled with microchips, we need the violin makers.