Meth and its hyperbolic and often mythological treatment in the media serve indispensable functions, functions previously served by ecstasy, crack cocaine, cocaine, heroin, and before that marijuana. In each case, a legitimately dangerous and addictive substance becomes largely identified with an easily marginalized population of users, and then serves the critical need of distracting attention from normalized use of other equally harmful, addictive substances whose social costs are orders of magnitude more devastating – alcohol, nicotine and food.

The difference, of course, is that the far more socially damaging substances are the drugs of choice of individuals who are in positions to normalize their use, while writing and consuming horror stories about this decade’s new psychotropic threat to order and culture. A dominant culture killing itself by alcohol, food, and nicotine takes some comfort in waging a drug war against the white trash meth users.

and some helpful comments by Mr. Kerner, Ms. Fisher’s musings remained so profoundly confused that it would be difficult to know where to begin to comment.

What seems most remarkable is how little respect, confidence, and hope her scheme places in the potential for men and women to choose, adapt, grow, and respect each other’s autonomy and independence. If authenticity and autonomy are the enemies of marketing, then Ms. Fisher’s typology is a perfect match for these online services and their consumers.

I wonder if part of the seeming lack of appreciation for Soderbergh’s The Good German lies in its unfailing refusal to provide the linear, dichotomous reassurances that we seem to need from our stories about ourselves from this period. Instead, we get the good guys doing bad things with bad motives and some of the bad guys doing good things with good motives. The Great War’s tribal tales about good and evil, sacrifice and triumph, bravery and victory are conspicuously absent, leaving us to confront, as in Malick’s The Thin Red Line, the unreconstructed internal human weakness, venality and brutality that would propel us, untransformed by our glorious Victory Over Evil, to reveal ourselves to the world as the nation we always have been.

Joan, your readers are providing some interesting and possibly valuable insights around the loose use of terms like “disease” and “sick”. You might especially re-consider the posts by larrfirr, webcelt, and E,PLURIBUS,UNUM.

If we were serious about protecting kids from abuse, then our efforts would focus on the environments with overwhelmingly highest risk, and would include images of kids with trusted adults clearly identified as their dads, step-moms, grandparents, uncle Timmy, and the priest. We would encourage and empower adults and kids to free themselves from the pathological construct of “family” and the secretive and shame-based protection it affords to abusive adults. We would work toward deconstructing kinship, “grandpa”, “mother” and all the other useful lies that so often protect monsters from scrutiny and keep kids and adults alike in abusive and guilt-based relationships

Couples stuck. Sex not working. Trapped mates unable to move past what keeps them from getting where they really want to be. Each unable to talk about or even access what that might be.

A viewer could get uncomfortable, even angry, just watching.

And that Scott Baio bloke sure seems unhappy. But why give up on him now, just when he’s about to straighten out, commit, settle down, start a family? With a potent formula for happiness like that, he’s got a chance to prove Sheila and Connie wrong! Will Scott be rewarded for finally maturing enough to accept the joys and obligations of matrimony and family, or punished for all those years of disapproved behavior and for exposing inner thoughts?

What viewer would turn away from that?

Despite the wealth of unfavorable literary critique here, this unassuming piece by Ms. Silag speaks directly to a fundamental, universal conflict within our hearts of darkness and our struggles to transcend self-destructive impulses. Her simple but astute observation that gossip is a universal compulsion, coupled with the emotional over-reaction in these responses, points to something that is both archetypal and disturbing to us.

Oh, wait . . . . sensitive readers who are discomforted by evolutionary theory should stop reading here. Skip directly to the next letter.

Think of gossip as it is commonly understood (with, as noted, the rush of superiority and ascendance, as well as twinge of guilt) and fundamentally as a behavior: in a small group, utterances are produced about an individual not present, and with the following effects: 1) the esteem and status of the individual not present is likely lowered (raising the status of others), and/or vulnerabilities are exposed, 2) behaviorally the individual not present is likely to be marginalized, excluded, or deprived of benefits (like social capital) afforded to the group, and 3) the individual making the utterances displays the fact that she or he possesses a valuable commodity, currency, or resource not possessed by the others – information which may affect status in a group or hierarchy – and thereby raises his or her value and status.

In our embedded history, status, security in a group, and associated access to physical, social, and reproductive resources were all about safety and survival, and gossip functions to enhance or lower status and group inclusion. Ancestral forms of gossip likely drove emergence of one of the most consequent and potent adaptations in human behavior – the lie. The cost of gossip is loss of trust, of congruence, and social (as opposed to individual) safety. It’s so hard to resist because refusing to engage is actually experienced as a sense of risk or loss of safety and belonging – check out what it feels like next time it happens. (You don’t need studies or evolutionary theory to directly access that experience.)

And yes, it really is all about evolutionary psychology. Get a grip.