Good Lord, Gary, take a chill pill. I'm a few days shy of 53 and take good care of myself, feel (like your relative) not a day over 35, and also believe I have also gained some wisdom. I hear it when I speak to my 21-year-old son, who actually listens to my advice. You and I, and millions of others, lived through the most turbulent era in modern times: sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll. We emerged from it alive and much smarter about taking risks with our bodies. That's wisdom.

I don't know about you, but I don't find anything appealing about "making friends with aging." I plan to remain true to myself. I'll feel any damn way I want to, despite what society tells me is appropriate for my age. Yes, nature has been kind to me and I can pass for much younger. Yes, my knees are fine and I play tennis three times a week. Yes, I actually have a nonsectarian faith that keeps me going. So, I do have some things you don't. But we share the experience of a powerful generation and I don't think that's something to forget. We survived and it's made us strong.

I'm younger than that now. Definitely.

Lynn Voedisch

I'm a feminist from way back and I can't see anything sexist about this at all. Really this is a nothing quote and I don't know why it's being singled out. And let's face it, the comment singling out the word "periodically"...Hillary is over 50 and surely she's not getting periods anymore. Let's get over this silly stuff and talk about the campaign.

This article just goes to show that Barack Obama was only speaking the truth in this latest controversy. How dare Hillary call him elitist? He's a half-black, half-white person who was raised by a single mother in sometimes dire conditions. Clinton was born a Republican in posh Park Ridge, IL, and never worked for anyone who wasn't highly connected in the political world. Really, it's a travesty.

Obama is the only one in this election who really seems to care about people and who wants to effect some real transformation of this country's policies.

I'm a former reporter and have written book reviews in the past. You are precisely correct about what makes a book newsworthy and what doesn't. These right-wing nutjobs don't understand that a book slamming Bush by the formerly self-effacing McClellan is news. Apologies and other B.S. is just business as usual. That's not bias, that's ferreting out the unusual and noteworthy things that make news what it is. And it would have been true if Dee Dee Myers came out and wrote the same sort of thing about Clinton.

Good article.

Does this remind anyone of the Harriet Meiers nomination? Same sense of desperation--a woman, any woman. Same lack of understanding about what women want. Same imprint of Karl Rove in both moves. I think this move is going to sink McCain if Palin is not knocked off the ticket first by a chorus of freaked-out Republicans.

Obama never ran on his experience, but on the his ability to make quality judgments. With McCain making this kind of judgment (an absolute blunder), Obama comes out looking like Solomon. Imagine Palin debating Biden. It's an absolute joke and a gift to the Dems.

Didn't anyone hear the story about how McCain was questioned by a representative from Spain, and he didn't even know where it was? He kept talking about Mexico and Latin America. And ended up saying he wouldn't meet with the leader of Spain. That's what Obama was so slyly bringing up. So, McCain, embarrassed about the whole thing, said "horseshit, because he would rather that the issue die a quick death. Better change the subject fast! I bet 90 percent of the audience missed this one, but I thought it was a masterstroke by Obama, and succeeded in really riling up McCain.

When is the Obama campaign going to do something about stopping this ridiculous rumor? The New York Times ran a cover story on the one guy who started the whole thing. One guy! And guess what? He's anti-Semitic, too. But the Muslim thing is now so fully ingrained in Net culture that it's going to take a commercial or a speech to debunk it. Please, please, please, Obama campaign, stop this thing now. Sure, it's beneath you, and sure, it shouldn't matter even if he were Muslim. But it's wrong and it's stopping people from voting for Obama. So, get out there and stop it. And if McCain were any kind of a Christian, he'd debunk it too.

As a white woman whose weight tends to migrate to the butt, I have to say that black women aren't the only ones with this issue. I'd say right on if Michelle makes the protruding derierre a fashion statement, so I don't have to hide mine under tunic sweaters and long jackets anymore. Not that I'm fat, mind you, just a little bottom heavy. But I did want you to know it isn't just a racial issue.

BTW, Cindy McCain looks to me like someone who may be suffering form anorexia. Did you see her in the last weeks of the campaign? She looked like a walking stick. Most unattractive, and she always looked like a scared deer. I really wonder how she's being treated at home.