My thoughts exactly on the generally crummy Super Bowl ads. But, Kaufman, how on earth did you escape the blitzkrieg of "Carol of the Bells"-takeoff Garmin commericals over the holidays? You lucky person you.

Even if the kid is really talking, who cares? It's not any more difficult to memorize pictures of the presidents than all the Disney princesses, Sesame Street characters, etc that toddlers can usually identify.

I'm with Ms. Traister 100% on this one. Growing up with a semi-anorexic, semi-bulimic mother who for years weighed everything she ate and wrote her weight every morning on the calendar, I resolved back in high school never to diet.

Being an American woman with an emotionally healthy attitude towards food and the body is, sadly, still a radically feminist act.

Bring on that goose fat!

Cary hit the nail on the head...

After a liberal upbringing that sounds not wholly dissimilar to the writer's, I got engaged at 21 and married at just-barely-23. I lived with internal feminist guilt about it for the first three or four years before I finally accepted that, yes, I had made exactly the right choice for me. Seven years on and recently saying goodbye to our twenties (I know that's not a lot yet, but I can't help my age), my husband is my best friend, and neither of us feels like we missed out on anything except a lot of horrid bad-date stories.

The contemporary ideology that says we all need to spend several years after college on our own to be happy, self-actualized adults is just that - an ideology, a statement of values disguised as a statement about human nature. If you don't want the solo path, and you've found the right partner, then go for it! (But do live with the guy for at least a few months before the wedding to make sure you're really compatible.) Just find some friends who aren't so judgmental.

After reading her thought-provoking essay with pleasure, I am amazed by the vitriol being directed at Burleigh by so many readers. I will admit that she may have overreached in concluding that she and her husband were also targets of the silent hostility directed at the lone Vietnam vet who spoke out at the assembly, but that is the only place in the essay where her perceptions appeared to be biased or unreliable. After all, she was manifestly able to see through the not-so-subtle conservative ideological indoctrination at the Narrowsburg school to recognize the real good it did her son, both in his reading skills and in his innocent patriotism. As for the much-repeated criticism that it was wrong of her to try to discuss the war with her son, it sounded to me like the explanation she gave him was completely age-appropriate. It was simple and concrete, and - unlike what he was learning in school - it also had the considerable virtue of being true.