No, I won't waggle my finger at Salon for publishing this. I have to laugh at the predictable chorus of people wailing and gnashing their teeth over the fact that a fluffy entertainment piece (one that had the gall to involve Jennifer Aniston again, no less) somehow squeezed through the Editorial Sphincter.

What was kind of off-putting was the whole setup of the piece, complete with the "the subject and her zany friends, including the author" picture. The whole exercise just reads like a dubious soapbox for one bitter almost-actress who may or may not have lived with The Jennifer to take some passive-aggressive shots at her former roommate. I don't mind fluffy pop culture pieces, even ones about overexposed stars. I just don't like pieces that seem like they exist only because the subject is a friend of the writer's. Cintra, I dug your work more when you were just trying to ape Hunter S. Thompson's style.

Despite the semi-literate hate you spew on an Internet message board, Jesus still loves you. He weeps for your ignorance and stupidity, but He loves you. However, that bastardized golden calf McJesus that your phony "Christian" preachers worship fully approves of your witless ignorance and shamefully shallow logic. So go ahead and send more money to whatever hateful idol you truly worship, but just remember that once upon a time, "Christianity" was about tolerance and love.

C.S. Lewis was a Christian apologist, but there isn't enough paper in the world to apologize for a "Christian" like you.

I, too, used to be gulled by McCain's cutesy little "maverick" stances. I loved his appearances on the Daily Show where he would roll his eyes when asked about Bush. Then he turned around and crawled up Bush's ass at the 2004 convention. Yep, he rolled over for the guy who smeared his name all over South Carolina in the 2000 primaries. At that point, I ceased believing in the Legend of the Maverick McCain. If he willingly cooperates with Bush's gang of bullies and weasels, then he's just another unprincipled operator angling for his own place at the table.

by this line in the review:

And sure enough, "V for Vendetta" is one of those movies that's hung up on big ideas without ever actually having any.

Wow. A Wachowskis movie that is creatively bankrupt, a shell of stylistic violence and explosions masking a total lack of storytelling ability or creative vision? My jaw is on the floor.

Those of you who are excoriating Stephanie Zacharek... Wow. I guess you hate her as much as I hate the Wachowskis. I haven't blown thirty bucks and six-plus hours of my life reading SZ's reviews, though.

So Pete found out it was satire but went full-bore with his arguments because the satirical article meshed with what he'd heard from the "pro-abortion" folks in his field work picketing abortion clinics and whatnot. He even posts his recollection of a conversation with one of these women he meets in the field...

(copied and pasted from his first follow-up post)

> An abortion is just killing a child at an early age right?

Right

> And that's ok with you?

Might be

> "Ok, let me pose this scenario to you, let's say there's a woman standing in front of you. Her young daughter is yanking at her dress pulling on it saying "mama" over & over, let's say she's a real pest.

Ok

> Then, suddenly, her mother reaches down & strangles that child to death. Is that okay with you?

Might be

It seems pretty clear to me that the woman he met in the field, if he recorded this conversation in any way faithfully, just stopped taking him seriously and started saying things to really tweak his pointy head. It's kind of the same as my friends who greet Jehovah's Witnesses at the door and politely, with a straight face, tell the JW that they worship Cthulhu.

If that's the basis for his "I hear similar things in the field" canard, it's just another brick in the wall of his cluelessness. Sadly, more evidence that there are some people out there who, by nature or nurture, are just missing out on entire levels of meaning in life.

By the way... I've seen those "God is pro-life" bumper stickers... God put that naughty tree with the fruit of knowledge in the garden. He's pro-choice above all.

Really. Try reading Professor Singer of Princeton, who has proposed a period of time as much as six months after birth in which parents can choose to kill their "defective" children. This thinking is more widespread than you think.

So are you suggesting that the woman he talked to in the story from his second post was, in fact, a woman who'd given birth in the last six months and wanted to kill her defective child?

Yeah, and what were the consequences of that "choice"? Yeah, we can freely choose, and then we pay the piper.

Free will. Sounds like a decent deal to me.

Cintra didn't make up the name "Xtina" for Christina Aguilera. That was her preferred moniker for a while when she was being particularly saucy with her public image. I'd call it her slutty phase, but then I'd probably draw the ire of all you conscientious guardians of marketing droid virtue. I don't even pay attention to that end of the pop culture pool and I managed to absorb that bit of knowledge by osmosis.

Cintra, the article was clever at times, but you need to stop trying so hard. You score points for the hentai line, but I spend more time trying to piece together your frenetic references than actually absorbing what you wrote. Oh, wait, that's because there wasn't much to absorb. Pop stars don't need to be able to sing? Wow. I haven't been this shocked since Milli Vanilli ripped the veil off my eyes.