Great little comment on Atrios' message board by Brian Newhouse, related to that silly Volokh article that I just blogged about:

Someday, some scholar will have an incredibly easy and highly productive time demonstrating the all-pervasive and unchallenged influence of Tom Clancy's novels on American politics and political thought from the time of their first publication on.

What's sad is that it isn't even based on the good Clancy novels from the Cold War, but the cheesy stuff that he put out from "Debt of Honor" on.