SALON

Tuesday, May 2, 2006 11:30 PM UTC

Men we love

Broadsheet's heart beats hard for Colbert, Clooney and Bruce.

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Topics: Broadsheet, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, Love and Sex,

It saddens us at Broadsheet when some readers complain we don’t like men. We love men, so many men we don’t know where to begin to tell the world about it. But let’s start with three who made the world a better place over the weekend: Bruce Springsteen, George Clooney and Stephen Colbert.

If you read Salon you know what Colbert did this weekend: It was the most subversive political act of the Bush presidency. He knew exactly what he was doing and how it would be received by the lemmings of the press corps, and he did it anyway. “Ballsalicious” is what Jon Stewart called it; Broadsheet agrees. Marry us, Stephen Colbert!

We don’t talk much about our feelings for George Clooney. They’re … private. For April Fools’ Day, we turned this site blue and made it Bradsheet. It fit, in so many ways, but we could never imagine poking even a little fun about our feelings for George. His prankster feud with Bill O’Reilly, the homage to brave journalists in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” the time I watched him greet hundreds of fans after a “GNGL” screening and make every one of them feel important; the fact that he hugged my daughter when (against my pretentious orders) she told him how great he was in “ER”; all of that was enough to win our devotion. Then he traveled to Darfur with his dad, Nick (oh, and we love his thing for his journalist dad), and came back and added his voice to those demanding that the U.S. end the slaughter in Sudan at the Sunday rally in Washington. Thank you, George!

Finally, there’s the official man of Broadsheet, Bruce Springsteen. Many of us share a Springsteen crush that crosses generations at Salon, but we’ve never loved him more than this weekend, when he brought his amazing “Seeger Sessions” band to New Orleans and reminded the country of the shared heritage we’re in danger of losing thanks to government incompetence before, during and after Katrina. The same day the press corps was ignoring Colbert, it was giving Springsteen a ton of attention for dedicating his version of “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” to “President Bystander.” But you still can’t hear about it enough. I’ve been looking around the Web for video of his version of “We Shall Overcome” in New Orleans and haven’t found it yet, but here’s a link for “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” which isn’t on the Seeger Sessions. Listen, and then listen again.

Joan Walsh

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America." More Joan Walsh.

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