I wonder if we could get an honest poll... let's see:

Anyone who has raised a teenager and posted in here, say aye.

Anyone who has not raised a teenager and posted in here, say nay.

(No, having BEEN a teenager doesn't count, though if you ARE one you might say "right here" or something.

If you are enjoying a relatively close and conflict-free relationship with your 14 or 15 year old, say "pending".)

Maybe just for now spare defensive projections and speculations on any agenda beyond the obvious, and just poll? I've got no axe to grind. I really would just really like to know.

Just a suggestion.

go to one of those really tacky acrylic nail salons (not a nice tasteful one). ask for extra long, curved talons; they love those. say extra-extra long. think mandarin.

it completely takes the pleasure out of nose picking; you just can't do it right. you can't steer. you can't scoop. your fingertips cannot explore for nooks and crannies. despite what would appear to be a fascinatingly new and inproved nosepicking technology, you can't GET anything. it's like trying to scratch an itch with silly putty. you'll get bored. i know from experience.

(try a delicate pink with a tiny diamond rhinestone on the corner of each pinky. unless you are into sunsets and flamingos.)

Two baskets. One for readers who are pleased with the return of Camille. One for those expressing, um, anything from vague distaste to wrenching dry heaves.

Compare relative weight of baskets.

Respond to decreasingly loyal and barely patient readers who are really getting disgusted with the drivel around here.

Whoever said that Salon seemed to be in danger of listing Slate-ward was not kidding. Let's let them have her and Hitchens too. (He was interesting back in the day, too. But we must move with the times and not become repulsive old raving narcissists just because we were sort of clever once, should we?) (No, we should not.)

And yeah, what's with the reticence re Obama? Is it that frightening to be sincerely and even publicly impressed by a man who is for once not an amoral, moronic mutant? I mean, there's that dread of being taken in, i know...

Salon is becoming nasty. Stupid nasty, which is the one of the nastiest nasties. And anyone who thinks that Rush is cute and wants to write about it may be allowed to publish and live and so on, but needs to be sent away from Salon straightaway: "shoo, shoo, silly ", like that, see?

It is a deliciously fey and funny little story, the outrage deliberately bitchy and flouncy and cheerfully self-denigrating, and I really don't know why I read he imbecilic letters in Salon. What a lot of thudding moralism. Thank you Peter; a very nice read and I love you.

joan, you just don't get obama. you are too busy with your internal categorical slice-ups... most often the whole tired old-school "feminist" slice, and now class slices, and etc etc etc... but it's all dead, stale stereotypes. look closely at this article and the last five you've written. count the boxes. people in this country don't go neatly into those boxes like that any more.

that's the "elusive" quality that people are picking up on in obama, it's what makes for the "charisma", it's actually something that some of us RECOGNIZE as the ability to articulate what we experience. and none of the other politicians have been able to do it. it's that quality that they're thinking might be some kind of vacuity (because something is missing. but it isn't specific policy that's missing. it's reflexive, conditioned, now ill-fitting old-speak. that's what's missing.)

what the hell is a "harvard type", an "upper class black type", a "rust belt type"?? the left and the right don't mean anything any more, "liberal" and "conservative" have slipped and leaked and shifted and no longer fit real PEOPLE.

you think old. obama is not doing that, he's trying to raise the bar of discourse, and i'll tell you what, a rust belt worker might very well say "raise the bar of discourse", and some "elitist" in a georgetown bar may haw haw you for the snooty language.

can't you GET this? "feminist" and "racist" are media obsessions because there's an safe old script. but you know, it just isn't that simple any more.