"Sorry, I'm out of here until after the election. Vote for Obama, I've known you would for a long time..."

"... but don't belittle the real questions surrounding him. Your rash of recent posts come across as a strained attempt to justify that decision on something other than aesthetics and blind hope." A commenter departs.

IN THE COMMENTS: Too Many Jims (author of the indispensable Monitoring the Cruel Neutrality) writes:

It has been amusing reading the comments for the last week or so. Before that Prof. Althouse would post something and almost immediately a liberal commenter... would pop into the comments and say that Prof. Althouse was a vapid, unthinking apologist (usually for Bush). Republican commenters would deride the commenter and say he was upset because Prof. Althouse is really an intelligent, independent minded, academic woman who has drawn liberals' fire because she has dared wander off the reservation.

Now, the republican ox is being gored and republican commenters are whining like the liberal commenters that Prof. Althouse is a vapid, unthinking apologist for Obama.

Part of me (approximately 10.73%) thinks that Prof. Althouse has not made a decision and/or is leaning toward McCain but that she made the "leaning toward Obama revelation" as part of a blogging as performance art project. Specifically, to see how the announcement would be received by commenters and the blogosphere.

Prof. Althouse is fond of saying that she has found that the left side of the blogosphere is looking for heretics, the right side is looking for converts (my apologies if I mangled that expression). What better way to test that theory.

IN THE COMMENTS: Simon wants to be frontpaged and tagged.

AND: Oh, I get it now.