Thanks so much for this small article. Now, if only the news would reach a wider audience!

I am a total humanities geek and loved my liberal arts degree--even though I knew it would never bring me much money. But as a student and graduate assistant both, I saw tons of kids who were not interested in college and who were not good students pile up the loans while laboring at a mediocre degree that was unlikely to bring them much success or happiness.

It's snobbery pure and simple, and we as a society help perpetuate it when we treat those in the trades as somehow less successful or less intelligent than anyone in a white collar job. It's just not true. Furthermore, I'll never understand WHY we'd want the people who build our houses, fix our airplanes, build our bridges, redo our plumbing, or most especially touch our electrical wiring to not be intelligent, well compensated professionals.

Skill and intelligence pays off in any job (including, yes, parenthood). If we'd just get over our stupid snobbery about what jobs are OK and which are not, we could have a happier, more successful work-force.

Bring on the apprenticeships and trade schools. We'll all reap the rewards.

I think almost everyone who has been a professional at something has mixed feelings about others' attempts to identify. I can imagine that a Wall Street professional feels much the same way as Ms. Sey when a neighbor or friend brags about a "killer investment." Many of you have spoken about growing up and understanding the connection people try to make far more eloquently than I could.

What I have to say is pretty simple. No, I'm not an athlete. Never have been, never will be. But by now I've read enough about doping, starving, performing while injured, and suffering under abusive coaches enough to realize that, for the most part, I don't care to identify with professional athletes. I watch very few sports, and the list gets shorter each year.

As for the Olympics, with all its jingoism, amped up emotion, and athletes who have sacrificed everything for a possible few seconds of glory (that at least some resent me from trying to share), I'm over it. Haven't watched one minute and don't plan to. I think I'll stick with the amateurs. They have less to brag about, for sure, but also less to be bitter about.

I've been waiting for this non-story to get more traction for a while. An article in Harpers last month went far in debunking the myth, and I thank you for this piece.

I'm from a Jewish family in a red state (Kentucky). About two-thirds of my family are very progressive Democrats; the other third are more conservative and tend to vote Republican at the presidential level. Every single Democrat in my family is a strong supporter of Barack Obama. If anything, his race is the icing on the cake of his candidacy, as it offers a glint of hope that America is making progress in its quest for full civil rights for all citizens. We don't think he's Muslim, and to paraphrase Colin Powell we think it's awful that that would be a non-starter anyway.

And the Republicans in my family? They are voting Republican again. It's mostly about taxes, Iran, and Israel for them, and race probably factors in, too. But these same family members (and, for the record, they are not immediate family members) voted for Bush four and eight years ago, so it's hardly personal. There's always been this strain of socially and militarily conservative Jews; it's nothing new in 2008.

The one thing uniting these factions? We all think Sarah Palin is singularly unqualified to serve in higher office, and we all find her religious connections unnerving at best. She's simply loathed.

On November 4, my Jewish family, all of my Jewish friends, and the staff at my son's Jewish pre-school will all be staying up late to send a big mazel tov to Barack Obama. His Jewish problem? We can't find a way to make him at least partially one of us.

Well, I sympathize. And I'm not black. I'm Jewish, and I have what my family and others call "Jew Hair". My brothers both sported "Jew-fros" in the 70s, and now wear theirs close to the head.

Mine comes in loose ringlets, which makes it easier to tame than most, but it is still prone to frizz. Throughout the years, my hair has caused me varying amounts of grief. It wasn't "pretty" when I was a teen, so I blew it out every single day. If it rained, I panicked. If I worked up a sweat, I panicked. Mid-day swimming? Never. Gilda Radner comparisons? Frequent and hurtful.

I expended inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to make my hair "good" and then keep it good. I finally got tired of the fight in late high school, found some curly hair products, and went natural. It was ridiculously liberating.

But I still hear subtle and not-too-subtle criticisms. A nasty boss once asked me why my hair was always "messy". A good friend blows her curly hair out every day because she says she wants to look "professional". Even the models out there with curly hair usually have theirs straightened or artifically set to make the curls uniform and perfect.

The politics of hair are amazingly complex, and this stuff is only silly if you have no idea what goes into it. I admit to only having a glimmer of an idea since I'm white and my frizzy hair hangs mostly down, but I've been rooting for the girls to stay natural and for Michelle to experiment herself. I think it would send a powerful message about racial--make that human--differences and how they are to be celebrated and not hidden.