Cary's right.

My daughter's partner can't let go of her fundie parents who don't respect her or my daughter. My daughter has to put up with endless harangues from Dad about her beliefs, her politics, etc. He's very unsavory, and so is his blob of a wife. They are losers who came close to destroying their daughter's happiness, and they are making my daughter unhappy. Why should either of these fine young women have to put up with them? Aren't my husband and I good enough? We don't make them strain to please us. We love them the way they are. These parasites are just frightened of being alone in old age. I say let their church take care of them.

My daughter turned down admission to a small liberal arts school which I will call "Whiteman College."Its remote location and monocultural student body were part of the reason. Another part of the reason was that an alum told her in confididence, "You must be really smart to get in. The girls have to be a lot smarter than the boys. They don't want a majority of girls in the student body, so they let in boys with lower grades and test scores."

Read this short masterpiece of a story by Murakami, which the New Yorker has kindly put online.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/articles/060213fi_fiction

Could it be that the emptiness so many of us feel is thinking someone loved us when he or she really didn't? And if we can own that, how we can wake up to ourselves?

My daughter was lucky enough to have an understanding employer when she was threatening early delivery and needed two months bed rest. Yes, she went nuts, but yes, she had a full term over eight pound baby instead of a 1 1/2 pound preemie. I would not like to have been the one to say to her, "Oh just get up, it isn't serious."

What Tom Tomorrow says mirrors the monotonous right wing propaganda it satirizes. That's why it's always the same, because what it satirizes is always the same. The hard-hitting and forthright Anonymous will of course say the same things every week about Tom Tomorrow's cartoons.

Pretty nasty. To imply that no one should object because her butt is nice is to miss the point.

Obviously, everyone in "Attacked's" life would be happy if she had never existed, with the exception of her son, who also would never have existed.

I was the person in my family who ruined everyone's life by being born. This happens to children more often than we would like to admit, and it takes years to get wise to the way those who are supposed to love you and care for you hate you for being around. The child goes on hoping until he or she grows up.

My parents are gone now, and I broke it off with my sister. I don't think about any of them much any more. I have created the family for my kids that I wanted for myself.

"Attacked," you should take a new name,something like "Blissful," say, move to a new town, and forget about your family. You can start over. Get some new stories about yourself. Even if you have to make them up.

Erin Sullivan has written a thoughtful article. She has been sheltered, I see that, compared to what I experienced in the 1950's in just one year at Berkeley. I had to fight off potential rapists twice and was sexually abused twice by men who had sex with me and then told me what a slut I was. It was a class thing: I belonged to a class of girls that no one had to respect. That was pretty typical of the times. I never heard of anyone I knew being attack by a pack of guys, but I guess it happened.

I am glad Ms. Sullivan is thinking now about bringing her boys up to be decent to women. It does not happen automatically. She loves her boys and wants them to turn into men she can respect. Obviously.

Ah, yes, the Midwest, where the Real People live. I suggest that those who have not read the Frankfurters should do so. Stat. Especially on the subject of the jargon of "authenticity." This is complicated stuff, but it's worth taking the time and trouble to understand it. Then when you hear prescriptive garbage about the real and the true and normal, such as, for instance, the notion that we should all be patriots, worship our lord, and respect our leaders and go to war for them, you can say, well, that's what you think is real and true. I have my own ideas.

I dislike the attacks on Mr. Sweeney's article. I get very tired of all the nasty behavior on college campuses. I appreciate every word of his article and agree with him 100%.

What I think is that the team players and their friends did not think it was wrong for those boys to rape a black stripper. The outrage is because they are expected to stand trial for acts that are within their rights under the rules of the patriarchy.

Yay! Another reason for men and women to hate each other!!!

When all else fails, bring up Monica.

I'm reminded (as I recall the story) of how one day D.H. Lawrence was banging his wife Frieda's head into the wall, saying, "I'm the man, I'm the man." So she said, "Go ahead and be the man, then."

Sometimes I think those crackers have it coming.

I always think of the teenage Joyce Maynard giving head to J.D. Salinger, over and over and over...

The very thought of blow jobs depresses me. But then a lot of things about sex these days depress me. It gives me a major case of anahedonia to think of all the crap people are up to in the sack these days.