But not everyone has access to the Internet. For economic as well as cultural reasons, working-class and lower-middle-class African-Americans, for example, are less likely to be equipped with a computer or to be obsessively focused on surfing national and international news sites. Is it relevant that African-Americans (by a voting pattern of 93 percent and up) remain so receptive to Jim Crow-era Democratic Party rhetoric? A near-monolithic voting bloc of that size (at a time when the majority of rank-and-file Republicans are hardly racist ogres) suggests insufficient internal debate, limited sources of outside information and peer pressure in families, neighborhoods and churches.

Though in the week following the election the major media publicized and magnified every inflammatory claim about voting problems in Southern Florida, not everyone was credulous. Salon reader T. Spanne sends this amusing satire about the storm of complaints and the demand for a revote whipped up by the national Democratic Party via telemarketers among elderly Jewish residents of Palm Beach County (where the long-used, Democrat-designed ballot form was published in advance and was accompanied at polling places with instructions for checking it afterward):

Due to the recent situation with our presidential elections, we feel that there are other things that should be "re"-done:
1. We need to contact the state lottery commission. To my horror while watching the lotto results, I realized that I had picked the wrong numbers and that the lottery's outcome was not to my advantage. Thus I am demanding a replay of the last lotto. I and eight others are exploring a possible lawsuit because the numbers were confusing! There are too many numbers to pick and they are too close together. There needs to be a local replay of the lotto!
2. We are contacting the local college board for a recall of last week's midterms. To my horror I chose the wrong answers to the test! We found that the multiple choice questions were too confusing, thus leading various students to receive unacceptable grades. We demand a local retest of this exam until we get satisfactory results.
3. I demand to be re-interviewed! After my interview with my prospective employer, I realized I answered some questions wrongly. The answers I meant to give were not given, and I need another opportunity to answer the questions properly as I had wished to. I am contacting the local labor board to challenge the decision of not hiring me. They need to re-interview!
4. I demand that my ticket be revoked! To my horror, I realized that I was looking at my tachometer instead of the speedometer! It's the manufacturers' fault since they placed the gauges too close together. I thought I was only going 5 mph! I am contacting the DMV to revoke my ticket and will be filing a lawsuit against all auto manufacturers who are responsible for putting the gauges too close together.

This whole West Palm Beach thing is a joke! How can 19,000 people (all in West Palm Beach) be that incompetent? What about the rest of Florida? Did all the morons migrate to West Palm Beach? They seem to be able to work 15 Bingo cards all at once!

A C-Span broadcast the day after the election gave me burgeoning hope for the revival of the Democratic Party: Sen. John Kerry was shown being interviewed by host Mike Barnicle on WSJZ-FM talk radio in Boston. In my few prior glimpses of Kerry on national TV, he's come across as a pompous diva, yet another insular Massachusetts liberal with a superiority complex.

But on that morning, bleary and spent from staying up half the night to watch the teetering election returns, Kerry was subdued and sober. All the vaunting ego was drained out of him. I was immensely impressed with his intelligence and range of detailed knowledge, his calm, lucid analysis of national and international problems. If only America could be governed like this, I thought -- in a relaxed, unpretentious, helpful manner by someone with natural authority. What an improvement over that shrill rooster (Gore) and peevish porcupine (Bush)! I'll be keeping an interested eye on Vietnam-veteran Kerry as Democrats maneuver for the 2004 nomination.

Throughout the chaotic news operatics of the past month, there are two moments I would name as Peak of the Sublime and Pit of the Absurd. The best first: At a moment of maximum tension in the election standoff, the Drudge Report posted a newswire alert about a massive outbreak of solar flares and the possible disruption of world telecommunications and power grids.

I view Matt Drudge's pioneering Web site as performance art, a surrealist collage and Warholian series of hour-by-hour Polaroids of modern culture. His startling solar-flares posting was literally hair-raising, reminding me of Ulysses' speech about "degree" in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida":

      But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture? (I.iii.94-101).

In a prior scene, the oily Pandarus seems to be describing too many of our current political leaders: "Asses, fools, dolts; chaff and bran; chaff and bran; porridge after meat ... The eagles are gone; crows and daws, crows and daws" (I.ii.250-55).

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