...but isn't this every letter in here? Not that I'm unsympathetic or disinterested. It's just sort of strange that this sort of thing always makes it into the column.

I wonder if Cary just receives letters similar to this all the time and has to answer some of them. Maybe he doesn't get more conventional, I hate my in laws kinds of letters? If so I wonder what that says about Salon's readership.

As far as the letter itself-- I'm almost thirty! can easily be seen as You're not even thirty! You have tons of time to figure out what you want to do. Just don't get up in where you are "supposed" to be in your life. You aren't "supposed" to be anywhere.

(and saying "case closed" is very lame.)

I think if you dig at all into your arguments, you'll find an implicit notion of the superiority of American athletes. I don't mean to put words in your mouth. But I get a definite sense that you think that, if America could just bring its unparalled athleticism to bear on soccer, we'd have a winner. But what makes you think we have better athletes?

The real question with Kaufman's (and you own) idea about the 6'8 255 pound soccer player is why, if one could be so effective, the other countries don't field one? Because (you assume) they are incapable of producing one? Why? Good old fashioned American gumption? Other countries have as much ability to produce tall, heavy and athletic players as the United States, and as you continue to beat into the ground, there is a better chance those huge athletes will play soccer than in the United States. So why don't any other countries field these soccer Shaqs that would be so prevalent in the US if soccer could attract them?

And you can say whatever you want to about soccer. But please don't take needless swipes at Sartre.

Why should we want cooler anybody? I guess I just don't understand why we should be attempting to advance the coolness-- a vague, insubstantial idea that affords no real tangible benefit for the people that have it-- for any particular ethnicity or religion.

I mean who are the people most likely to be consider cool, at least in the broad strokes this story deals in? Black people. But what are the tangible socio-economic conditions many black people find themselves in? Significantly worse than those of most Jewish people. So why should Jews pursue coolness? I mean I'm open to the possibility that coolness could be related to more substantial and obvious benefits. I'd love to hear about the larger ramifications of what the author is talking about. But there's none of that in here.

How can you call a country a democracy when one half of its people have no citizenship rights? How can you call a country a democracy when it has different classes of citizens, separated on religious and ethnic grounds? How can you call a country a democracy when the brown skinned minority must carry special identification cards, have separate government buildings, have separate rules for international travel, can have their homes bulldozed at a moments notice, live at times under 24 hour curfew, are separated from water in a desert country, and have no representation in the supposed democracy whatsoever.

You can't have a country that favors a religion and an ethnicity and still be a democracy. Egalitarianism is the bedrock of modern liberal democracy.

There have been many unforgivable crimes commited by Palestinians and in the name of Palestine. And yes, as people insist on saying, there is blame to go around. But the denial of a bare fact: that the Palestinian people are horrifically and systematically oppressed and have been for generations. Until the Zionist side of the debate acknowledges that fact there can be no peace. There can't be progress now because the pro-Israel side of the debate refuses to acknowledge that the current treatment of the Palestinian people is inhuman.

And please, spare me the platitudes about security. There is no security in Gaza. There is no security in Ramallah. Even the most ardent supporter of Israel will acknowledge that the vast majority of casualties in the conflict, since the expulsion in 1948, have been Palestinians. It's just a lot more politic for affluent white people in America if you do your killing with soldiers and tanks instead of with dynamite and razor blades strapped to your body.

Americans have short memories. The United States was the principle defender of South African apartheid for decades. Now, people can't imagine how that's possible. Change will be long in coming and it will take many years. But it will come.