That's a recovery joke. Justified resentment is what so often excuses drunks getting drunk.

If I drink I could go into a blackout. If I go into a blackout I could drive. If I drive in a blackout I could put as many people in the vehicle as could fit. Then the show starts.

I know at least one drunk who was trying to not drink and got drunk without being aware of taking the first drink.

A non-recovering drunk with no alcohol in his or her body is not sober.

In reading these letters, those from people wise to recovery are in a completely different world from those who are not. Recovering people had a number of different takes on the Susan Cheever article, but they got what she was saying.

Those not wise to recovery, Whew! It was for the most part scary. So many were unable to hear that Susan Cheever was saying that Diane Schuler was both simultaneously responsible for her behavior and suffering from an understandable disease that tricked her in a number of ways. They were almost all so cock-sure about their will-power and responsibility over their lives. They can be responsible only if they can choose not to be responsible. This is the test of their vaunted sobriety. If they have no choice but to be responsible, that's not responsibility. They're as compulsive as the drunk.

Put another way: There are "responsible" parents who spend whole lives compulsively lost in their preoccupations. They are less than completely there for their own lives, much less for spouse and children. This kills. You can say it doesn't kill as much as Diane Schuler did. It kills. Before you get on your high horse, learn something about this, in depth. Behaviorally, in your own body.

The guy who thought it was great to shame drunks and whose mother has been sitting around drunk for 35 years: So how good a job has shame been doing in shaping her up? That is to say, things could be better. Shame is gasoline on the fire of the disease.

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A party has the power. A movement does not. So we should put all our eggs in the basket of "the far-flung efforts" of a movement. Am I getting it right? This is what you recommend?

The needle of America is twitching just left of dead center and you want to desert our tenuous base of power for your pet project? even if it may be my pet project too?, you understand. "Hang together or hang separately" sound familiar? Come on, join up with your very own Democratic Party today. We need you. You're one of us. No Nadering, please. Shoot yourself in the foot and a lot of other feet get plugged too.

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Well, yes, and I'm just as angry as you are about it, though not at Barack.

I'm heartsick at even the thought of us without a public option, and it drives me nuts that a minority consisting of those poor sick frightened arch-conservatives - who get mean when they're scared - are able to buffalo so much of the middle into their not-real world.

But the point is not to go and get too blustery when you don't have a filibuster-proof majority.

Talk reason to the middle. It can be done firmly. I bet that's what we'll hear tomorrow.

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I don't think we should call people racist if we can't prove it. That said, it's worth assuming that the overt racists aren't in the Democratic Party and are squirreled away somewhere in Republican ranks. (5% of them? 10%?) Plus I tend to think that you're probably often right, but that we're then talking about unconscious racists who'll just be pissed off by such accusations; that they don't care if someone's purple, but they can't abide socialists.

The question is if those who aren't too far gone can be reeled back in, or can reel themselves back in. That is, can they remember that they can be comfortable in the diverse stew that is America? Can they both love Country & Western music and accept other forms and people as genuinely American? Can they not lose their head enough to see that what Obama's doing is in their best interests as much as the rest of us who are not rich?

If we get going on what racists they may or may not be, we're driving them and us apart. Besides not always being accurate - and accuracy is VERY IMPORTANT - it's not practical.

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I liked her movie with Vince Vaughn, "The Break-Up," a lot. It doesn't occur to me to say she can't successfully take on a difficult acting challenge. Not just any difficult acting challenge, but that can be said for any actor.

No, what she's up against is getting distracted by her press.

Vince Vaughn might be coming up with good roles too. Did you see him subbing after Dave Letterman's heart surgery? He was the best of a not-shabby bunch.

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I'm not sure how much I'm hearing justified caution, how much cynicism, and how much not knowing about parsing spiritual good from drek.

The New Age can be fanatical.

Egolessness may or may not be religious. It is, certainly, mysticism and does such things as relieve drunks of the dread disease of alcoholism, one day at a time. Knock it if you want, but it works.

Psychotherapy's not half bad either. Don't let anyone give you any of that talk about "the worried well." If you're worried all the time, you're not well.

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