Heather - surely there are other shows on TV worthy of your critical powers. Yet you review these same ones over and over - suggesting you like them, or at least like *some* things about them. So why all the sarcasm and America-hating? *I* don't watch these shows. Lots of Americans don't. Just like lots of Americans hate the way, aren't fat, aren't stupid, and read more books than watch television. Usually your writing is funny - when it's in good fun. But this column sort of missed the mark - instead of having fun with a BB gun, you're aiming a howitzer right at the jugular of the very people doing what YOU are doing - watching a really bad show. Isn't your job to help us find hilarity in such fodder - that, or save everyone from ever exposing themselves to it by writing such a hilariously incisive review that no one ever bothers to tune in? Why reserve all your scorn and sarcasm for the audience vs. the producers?

The site is called 'stuff white people like", not "stuff only white people like" or even "stuff that, if you like it, you must be white or trying to be white."

your readiness to be offended is actually on the list of stuff white people like. #2, if I recall correctly.

and if blacks, hispanics, asians or really any one likes a bunch of the things on the list, they aren't 'trying to be white', they are simply bourgeois

Had really bad allergies. At first the snort/gasp was essential - I felt like I was choking and would die if I didn't snort/gasp. But gradually I started doing it all the time. And I do mean All. The Time. People mentioned it to me, but not enough for me to feel too embarrassed to stop. Finally my husband bought this funny little noise maker that went Boinnnnngggggg! The kind of sound effect you hear on Nickolodean all the time. He used it every time I snorted. I stopped pretty quick. It was nice to see it as something funny vs. something as unpleasant as what he was actually experiencing.

Be direct, be humorous, tell him you're going to help him stop for his own good, and yours.

"Honey, I've been meaning to ask you - what's up with the sighing?"

"What?"

"The sighing. Do you realize you do it after every single drink? You do. Really! It's become your thing, like Snidely Whiplash twirling his moustache."

"Oh."

"So I bought this noisemaker. I'm going to blow it every time you sigh. OK?" (demonstrate)

"Why?"

"Well, we'll either both go crazy together, or we'll become that crazy couple who both make weird noises, instead of that nice saint-like woman married to the guy who sighs all the time."

The LW said s/he was having difficulty figuring out where the line btw personal assitant and administrative staff lies. So clearly this is not a 'should I blow the whistle on my Enron bosses' financial malfeasance' kind of issue.

She questioned a task, presumably one in her view was more personal assistant-ish than admistrative. Perhaps her boss asked her to pick up his dry cleaning or buy his wife a gift.

The thing is, since her boss is a principal, s/he can't really question what is best for the company - the boss IS the company. Her only real choices are to do what is asked, or go find a job that does not require her to do the kinds of things she doesn't like to do.

It didn't sound to me like s/he was 'standing on principle.' No ethics violation was even hinted at. It sounded to me like s/he felt s/he was asked to do a task s/he considered beneath her, and now is embarrassed, angry and offended that everyone s/he consulted told her to, in effect, 'shut up and do your job.'

I had the same thought. Cary's advice was good, but the way the letter was worded...after reading, as the evening wore on, the idea that a woman wrote it crept in and became conviction.

...standing answer by Cary. You could do a whole lot worse, following that advice.

But they chose a poor way to do it. I mean really - what, exactly, is 'wrong' about not being married to the father of your child? Aren't we just a little bit past the whole "this child is a bastard" thing?

Let's say for a moment that older folks - the type mostly likely to vote for McCain, for example - find the idea of unwed parrents really really reprehensible, and that's why Fox News made the comment. Is there really any danger that any American in the country might conclude that the Obamas aren't in fact married?

It was a stupid thing to say and I have no doubt that Fox had nefarious purposes, but I refuse to take the bait and thus vilify women who are not married to the father of their children. The only way to defeat Fox is to refuse to let them define the terms. Michelle Obama's dignity and grace will be answer enough in the face of such gleeful disrespect.

Makes just as much sense.