Kids are along for the ride of their parents' lives.

What makes stability, the kind that is important for people to know, is other people they can count on.

The first priority is for a kid to know they are loved, and that love on their parents' part is what puts a roof over their head and a deck under their feet. What counts isn't things, but people and relationships.

Adopted kids, like genetic kids, don't get to pick their parents. If a kid gets a drone, or a stickler, or a vagabond weirdo is the luck of that kid's draw. Many different kinds of people make good parents. And, kids inexperience makes it difficult for them to appraise the choices their parents face.

As long as the dad is as responsible about owning and maintaining the boat as he is about looking after his kids, they'll all be fine, and the kids may wind up with life experiences that their friends will envy.

The only thing better than a financier with a noose around his neck, would be three hedge fund managers, stuffed dummies in pinstriped suits, tied to my back bumper as I follow the wee ones on their rounds. With Bush and Cheney stuck on my front bumper.

Perhaps the writer, and the photog, and the editor are all people for whom clueless, classist, narcissism flies under the radar.

Oh, my goodness, how did this happen? Maybe it's the mindset among the elite doofi at the Gray Lady.

Ya think?

Shaving is one of the unsexiest things a woman can do, unless she's trying to attract a closeted pedophile.

The Hitler patch is just plain repulsive.

Shaving and waxing is just one more way we have made chumps out of women desperate for acceptance.

Want to be attractive? Try being sharp, witty, empathetic, curious, adventurous, intelligent, capable, and well read.

Leave the "little girl lost" look to some idiot with her index finger hooked on her lower lip.

What's the point in attracting a guy by sitting shaved on the sofa, making an "O" with your pouty lips, and smooshing your tits between your hands with a surprised "What are THESE?" look on your mug, and then plaintively wondering what's wrong with the men these days?

..."Am I or am I not a douche?"

The answer is obvious.

So you make your decision based on a carful of kids, kids' friends, and dog; and how often is this in fact your payload? Does every parent whose kid owns a ball glove feel obligated to buy a vehicle that hauls the whole team? If the answer is "Yes, I always haul kids and dogs and toboggans everywhere I go.", then get the damned van, and don't be a self-hating, surbanite, bow-tie daddy.

If, in fact your need for a styling transit bus is overstated, well, the '08 gets 22mpg combined average mpg: Not green.

But, hey, it's not good for everybody, just the guy in the seat. Light up a Winston, let's go cruising.

First, an interview with Chris Rock would have been of a little more interest than an interview with Andrew O'Hehir interspersed with a word or two from Chris Rock.

Second, in a similar vein, have a little humility. Keep your questions in standard font, and give the interviewee the bold face.

Geez.

I'm not a particularly avid Olympics fan.

But if it's true, it makes me like him better.

If American journalists could pry their lips from the barbecue and butt-smooching long enough to pretend to do their job, they, and we all, would have this as common knowledge by now.

When Paglia grows too old for cougaring impressionable undergrads at Carnivale, does that mean we'll be in for even more of her drivel?

You encourage this confused gal to figure out if this "friend" is "important" to her?

When her husband belts her, should she "try to figure out if she really wants him in her life"?

She has just received all the confirmation a sentient person needs to know that this tragic choice of a "friend" is in fact an asshole - and not just a one-time-under pressure-asshole, but such-an-asshole-that-she-marries-a-matching-asshole!

Yeah, she should figure out if she still really wants this bitch an her matching beau in her life. An if the answer is "yes", then she should get straight to a thgerapist to be made well again.

Society takes a body blow every time a good cop is injured or killed in the line of their duty to serve and protect.

Every time there is a shooting like Oscar Grant's; every time a police detainee is unjustly beaten or abused; whenever a young cop becomes the shame of his force by muscling a family coming to a hospital to see a dying relative; whenever a citizen is needlessly tortured by Taser - or even killed; the bad cops are pinning the arms of good cops everywhere, and inviting tragedy to take its worst shot.

What is the basis for your belief that we need to hear from this freak?

Has he even one credential as a serious and enlightened observer of the political scene? Or does anyone who has eaten a live chicken head get an automatic billing in your sideshow?

Why is Salon.com becoming a proponent of wingnut welfare?

When do we get "Ask the buggywhip manufacturer" or "Queries for modern Whigs"?

We get enough of this crap in GOP campaigns; we don't need it here, too.

And why is this forthright commentator so proud of his party, that he won't be identified by name?

Compost works in the garden, but not in the realm of ideas. You can throw the Wingnut and Camille Paglia into a bin, but no matter how long you wait, you aren't going get anything more useful out of that heap.

Now, stop screwing with us, and give us some useful information.