While I'm usually a fan of despised, self-destructive troublemakers like Courtney Love -- because I identify with them, I guess (even though I'm a guy), and feel somehow empowered by their fuck-the-world attitude -- I can't sympathize with Paris as one of our culture's "fallen women"; her venality, mean-spiritedness, ignorance and old-school bigotry rule that out.

On the other hand, the media obsession with her supposed "sluttiness" is obviously misogynistic and creepy. (And truth be told, is Paris Hilton so extraordinarily promiscuous?)

My clock radio wakes me up every morning with this terrible local morning show (hey -- the point is to drive me out of bed), and for the last few days the hosts (both women) have been licking their chops over the "seatless toilet" Paris was supposedly using in her "prison cell." Something has indeed gone wrong in your life if you're finding your fleeting moments of joy in the thought that Paris Hilton will have to use a grimy, seatless toilet.

"It was planted by the president of the French Senate and the U.S. ambassador, 'as a symbol of Franco-American friendship,' on Jan. 30, 2002 -- not exactly the warmest time in that transatlantic relationship."

What?

That was, in fact, a very "warm time" in the relationship between the U.S. and France. Only 3 1/2 months earlier, Le Monde, for instance, had run the headline "We Are All Americans." There was tremendous widespread international support for Bush and the U.S., and for our invasion of Afghanistan.

This sentence suggests that our country's damaged relationship with France was somehow an inevitable result of the attacks of 9/11. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I hate to join the chorus of haters here. I like Berke Breathed and Bloom County (and still have a cartoon Breathed drew for me when I met him as a kid), and I sincerely do want Opus to, you know, rock . . .

But I'm with the first two posters this time. Breathed is smart enough to attempt some actual satire, and I wish he would. This is Salon, dude! This is the sixth year of the Bush presidency! Show some balls!

Of course, I wouldn't be complaining if, like the next few posters, I found the cartoon funny. But "Family Circus" is right -- I just don't find toothless, anodyne, office-coffee-mug humor amusing.

Some context: I just got back from seeing "Knocked Up." My date was grossed-out and offended. The elderly couple next to me walked out. I loved it! It was hilarious, not because it was offensive (Family Guy doesn't do it for me either), but because it was willing to say the things we ordinarily aren't allowed to joke about, even when those things happened to be shocking (but also when they weren't, when the sentiments were as conventional -- and true -- as, for instance: "childbirth is amazing").

This strip is frustrating because of the tease; it seems like it's going to commit to doing something brave and interesting, and then backs away from the plate. The word "tinkle" is revealing; after years of writing for "family newspapers," maybe Breathed just needs to retrain himself to writing for adults.

If using words like "piss" will help get in you in a frame of mind where you're able to risk offending people with genuine satire, then I say: bring on the gratuitous vulgarity.

(Let Opus rock!)

Bobbyjoe: that letter made me laugh out loud. (Factoid: it was while reading the Family Circus that I first had the realization that there was no God.)

And my own earlier letter, I see, was hilarious as well -- hilariously assholish. It can't be a good sign when drinker's remorse includes a vague memory of writing an anonymous poison-pen letter to a cartoon penguin. (And yet, here we are, apparently.)

Honestly, I'm not sure, now that I think more soberly about it, that I would want really a series of grim, disturbing Opus cartoons on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and the corruption of the U.S. Justice Department.

At this point, I should probably stop expressing strong opinions about comic-strip characters. (Opus, you can riff on whatever the fuck you want.)