First of all I am thankful that no one at Thanksgiving talked politics. This way I didn't have to listen to my parents and their friends (people I like and respect) tell me how dumb George Bush is. (I don't blame them for not liking him - just be smart about it.)

Richard Cohen's column caught my eye. I usually find him self-indulgent (not as bad as Maureen Dowd say, but not worth the time.) But in this column he discusses how Thanksgiving has remained a truly national holiday, uninfected by commercialism. He then criticizes other national holidays that have been reduced to sales events. I agree, particularly when he notes that rolling Washington and Lincoln's birthday into "Presidents Day" does a real disservice to these truly great men and hence to us as a nation. He is a bit over the top when he writes: "Every time I see a commercial with someone dressed as George Washington hawking a Toyota, I want to bomb Tokyo all over again." Don't blame the Japanese for our commercialism. And of course he can't resist a partisan dig, claiming that the Republican Congress would have bottled the Declaration of Independence in committee.

This is why I don't read Richard Cohen - I get enough of that mental stuffing at the Thanksgiving table.