edziu's muse, you have your reasons for coming here, but I doubt they're widely shared. Cary isn't that good a writer, and an advice column isn't the best place to practice poesy; his answers should be more prosaic and less prosy.

I come here 'cause I like the train wrecks. I also think it's a good idea to warn the men who write to Cary that they might want to consider another advisor; Cary will favor the interests of any woman over those of any man. He even advised a male abuse victim to consider how he was contributing to his wife's desire to hit and hurt him. This is not an advice column any man should consider consulting.

Cary's point about the power the LW supposedly has is fairly stupid. That's not unexpected; Cary gets stupid when responding to women about men. However, the power of youthful beauty is very temporary, and it often goes long before the bearer fully realizes it. Those who are attracted to youth are attracted to its most perfect examples; even a little sagging is enough to make them look elsewhere.

If you leave him for going bald today, LW, don't be surprised if in a few years you are abandoned for losing your looks. When he learns to deal with his aging, his market value will go up and up. Yours won't, unless you cultivate deeper values than mere appearance. I'm not saying that you don't have those values, by the way. I'm pretty sure you do. Your empathy for his situation is wonderfully touching. It's a lot more attractive than a mass of toned, firm flesh, and unlike the flesh, the empathy will stay with you.

You're better than Cary's advice. Help your man get through this and your relationship will be better than ever.

I wish you the best.

Yet again, a man writes Cary for advice in a situation where a woman has a competing interest.

Yet again, Cary ignores the man's interest and favors the woman's. (Yeah, guy, you should totally pretend to like something you hate in order to keep this woman by your side. It will be excellent practice for a lifetime of servitude. That is Cary's model of a healthy relationship, after all -- a man in servitude to a woman.)

If I thought this letter was real, I'd probably just shrug it off. At this point, any man who writes Cary for advice in a situation where a woman has a competing interest probably deserves what he gets. He even deserves all the whining women who write letters attacking him for daring to dislike something a woman does, and all the guys writing letters because they aren't getting laid and hate him for having choices.

But since this letter is prety obviously a fake, I'll just light the touchpaper and retire. Let the female supremacists and the wannabe white knights yammer on. Better they should exercise themselves over an issue that doesn't exist.

Anyone who pretends that Democrats hold their Presidents to higher standards should have learned better at any of several points during the Clinton administration. The man was even disbarred, for crying out loud -- you lionize as a President a man who was considered morally unqualified to represent a client in court!

You do a lot of tough talking about bitch-slapping and face-punching. You do realize that you'd be called out on it if you were a man griping about his wife, right? That the harpies who infest this forum would descend upon you and rend you limb from limb for wanting your wife to do the laundry? Demeaning! Sexist! Violent chauvinist!

Well, I'm calling you out on it. That kind of talk won't get you anywhere with any reasonable man, and if you try to put it into action, you may end up attending a Mass for the Dead without having to kneel. At the very least, you could go to jail, if you happen to live in a jurisdiction in which men are not automatically held to be at fault in any incident of domestic violence.

So stop strutting your inappropriate violent streak and consider the power of speech and understanding instead. Have you asked him why he won't do this? Have you given him a non-threatening context in which to discuss it, one free of bitch-slaps, ill-mannered screaming, verbal traps, and interruptions? Try it. It may not work at first -- he probably has little reason to trust you to stay reasonable, and you may need to exercise some actual patience and love with him -- but if he sees he's safe to explore this without your using his every word as a weapon to be turned against him, he might be able to help you.

So give the aggression a rest, Punchy, and try using your brains instead. Maybe then you'll be worth staying married to.

totallyblase, how can you respond to an article about a 1975 autobiography with a statement that events in 2000 are too far in the past to be worth considering?

I realize that's the standard Democrat programmed response these days to anything about Clinton, but don't be more of an idiot than God made you. If we're to compare the behavior of Republicans now to the behavior of Democrats when their guy was in office, Clinton is the most recent example -- and at a mere seven years ago, historically it's quite recent. I realize you people want to bury the example of your conduct during the Clinton administration like a cat kicking sand over a turd, but buddy, the smell lingers.

When Republicans were faced with a man who was morally unfit to be President, they did the right thing. Democrats, faced with the same choice, wouldn't -- and now they pretend that it happened a century ago. You only wish.

...the bachelor party is about the groom-to-be and his friends, not about the opinions of some random woman.

God forbid any woman should ever be told something isn't her business, right?