When I read the Letterman jokes for the first time I thought they were pretty nasty and offensive and I don't agree with Palin's politics and I do have a sense of humor.

I think Letterman is more than a little bit out of touch. His humor is very repetitive and stale, he uses the same formula that he started out with in the 1980s.

Well thought out and well written. I am a liberal, and I notice that there is more right-wing extremist violence during democratic presidential administrations than during republican administrations. I remember the rise of the Michigan Militia during the Clinton administration.

I believe there is a connection. But I also believe it is important to note that there are violent extremes on both the right and the left wings. So although I rarely agree with the wingnut, I think that this is as good a conservative response as possible.

I don't get the lionization of Mumia and Pelletier by the left. I am liberal, but I don't get it. Peace-seeking, justice-seeking people should not embrace vigilante or terrorist violence no matter the perceived justness of the cause.

Cary-- loved your letter and was saddened by your birth trauma vision -- well, more by your negative interpretation of it.

Most children do not expel violently from their mother's vagina as if they were fired from a canon.

It is a gradual and difficult process, very painful for the mother, and it is a release of her child into the world and her arms-- not a rejection. You must contemplate your vision further, and educate yourself as to the biological realities to gain a higher understanding.

A placenta begins to distenegrate if the pregnancy goes on too long. The child runs out of room in there. The amniotic fluid diminishes. The womb will become inhospitable.

You could not grow in there indefinitely. You were released so that you could continue to grow and reach your fullest potential. Whether a child gets stuck en route to the outside, or is thrust out quickly, (as is typically the case of a later pregnancy when the mother's body is a little more experienced with the routine), it is a release not a rejection.

I believe your startling vision had much more to do with your mother's death than it did with your birth. I believe this is true whether the vision came before or after or simultaneously at the moment you consciously understood that she was leaving the world.

I believe that when a parent dies, no matter the age of the child, existential feelings of abandonment, of having been thrust into the world defenseless and unwilling are a natural result of having to confront one's own origins and one's inevitable mortality simultaneously.

Please be kind to yourself and all of your thoughts and feelings as they arise within you. Your mother did a good job in creating and then raising you-- whatever missteps were made by either of you along the way, you are a really good person helping many people in this world. You are a force for good in the world.

I think Asian men are very attractive. I had a huge crush on a Chinese-American classmate of mine in law school but alas he only preferred Asian women as girlfriends and I am not Asian so we were just friends.

I also think that Jewish guys are very attractive and married one very attractive Jewish guy. I think Italian guys are attractive too, but being a half-Italian myself, it was always too difficult to imagine myself with a guy that resembled my brother and cousins too closely, so I didn't date very many Italian men.

Red headed men of Northern European descent are very cute too. As are dark haired, blue eyed or brown eyed men from Latin America. And men of African descent are often quite beautiful.

Some people have more specific preferences. Some are based in offensive stereotypes. It seems that you hear a lot about the White-Man/Asian-Woman preference and the men that talk the loudest about it are kind of boorish, focusing on things like physical characteristics and bodily odors (or lack thereof) and the stereotype that Asian women are more likely to be submissive. But I have known quite a few Asian women at various levels of education and occupations and can say honestly NONE of them were submissive types so I never completely got the stereotype.

Some people are attracted to the familiar, some are turned on by the exotic-to-them.

Frankly, it sounds like a manufactured controversy and an excuse for the author to engage in some intellectual wankery.

you wrote:

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Note to advertisers: Many of us use ad-blocker and never see your ads anyway. Just lots of nice white space to the right. I shudder to think of what ads would be generated by this discussion. Condoms, perhaps?

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ROTFLMAO.

Right now as I write this, a Viagara ad. On the page where I read your original note, imagine truncated (i.e., headless) female torsos in bikinis advertising a diet product.