Jennifer, are you equating bottle-feeding with smoking during pregnancy? And you wonder why parents who bottle feed are a tad defensive.

The thing that amazes me in this discussion is, the people on the bottle side are basically saying, "bottle feeding is okay, and we shouldn't be made to feel like child abusers for doing so, whatever our reasons." And some (not all, I know, but some) people on the breast side come back with, "how dare you try and discourage women from breast feeding, poor women can't afford formula, food and drug industry blah blah blah". Never in my life, including in my earlier post which someone gave me shit for, have I tried to discourage anyone from breastfeeding. But I don't like the way it's pushed as the only option, and that if you're not doing it, you're doing something wrong.

I know women who, for medical reasons, couldn't breastfeed, and were still attacked by near-strangers for bottle-feeding as if they were deliberately hurting their child.

Is breast milk the absolute healthiest way to go? I'm sure, in most cases, it is. So is going vegan - that doesn't make me a bad parent if I feed my kid eggs. My 3-month-old is bottle fed, and he's in the 90th percentile for height and weight. My brothers and I were bottle fed, we're all over 6 feet tall, I haven't gotten sick enough to miss a day of work in my life, and one of my brothers would have had a shot at the Olympics if not for an injury. So, yes, maybe if we had all been breastfed we would have been slightly better off, but I honestly have no complaints about the way things turned out.

I guess the thing that galls me about this is, 1) I'm not trying to tell anyone else what to do with their own kids, 2) I'm not doing anything that's actually hurting mine. So why am I (and others like me) getting a hard time, both IRL and on here?

And as for "America doesn't support breastfeeding because women get shit for maternity leave", that's not specifically related to breastfeeding. That's part of a larger issue, "American doesn't support pregnant women," which is part of a larger-still issue, "America doesn't support women." Trust me, 6 weeks of unpaid maternity leave sucks no matter how you're feeding your kid.

This is specifically why Alberto Gonzalez, the man who crafted our pro-torture policy, was named Attorney General. Because he believes that the President, and the government in general, are above the law. Now, of course, that belief is 180 degrees away from everything this country has ever stood for. Welcome to the Bush era. But having taken that stand on torture, Bush put Gonzo in charge of the Justice Department because, if the guy's willing to tear up the Geneva convention, there's no rule of law he won't see trampled on.

I'd say this story was uplifting and shows a promising trend... if it were set in Afghanistan. As it is, it's scary to me that this "you're the property of your husband or father" attitude is still clinging to life in this country.

Someone well upthread wrote:

> hospitals should not be required to advocate formula usage in order to spare the feelings of women who cannot breast feed.

This breast vs. bottle thing is starting to resemble the War on Christmas, in terms of the level persecution complex. No one was requiring hospitals to give out formula - the hospitals were doing that voluntarily. The government decided to step in and forbid hospitals from giving out free formula. At no point in this was there an anti-breastfeeding scenario. Making someone aware of the existence of bottle feeding, or giving them 4 ounces of formula, isn't going to stop anyone from breastfeeding any more than Target wishing you a Happy Holidays is going to destroy Christianity. Likewise, we shouldn't ban hospitals from giving away something many new parents will need, any more than we should force everyone to say "Merry Christmas" under penalty of jail time.

As someone else commented, Jack has no personality. But that's true on multiple levels - both the lack of any human presence whatsoever, but also in the lack of any musical consistency. Yes, you'll get Radio, Radio, but it'll be followed by some cheesy synth-pop that makes Richard Marx sound like a badass by comparison. And then the substance-free cheese metal that people like Elvis were revolting against in the first place.

A should be your friend who loves music and seeks out what's really good and turns you on to it. Jack is your friend who buys whatever shitty CD Columbia House sends him every month, and plays them all indiscriminately. So, yes, it's like listening to someone's iPod, but that someone has really shitty taste in music.

that should read "A radio station should be your friend..."

Every time Coulter, or O'Reilly, or Pat Robertson issues another jihad against a respected public figure, they lose even more credibility. Some people like Coulter; some thing she's nuts. But I'd say the "nuts" crowd gets bigger every time she opens her mouth.

One thing that's always bothered me about the Village Voice's critic's poll, other than the fact that they let Christgau right a typically pointless stream-of-consciousness ramble that the guy who cracked the Rosetta Stone couldn't make heads or tails of, is the name. Pazz. Jop. Get it? They switched the letters! The Voice is supposed to be the nation's pre-eminent alt-weekly, and that's the best they can do? Any 14-year-old who's ever ridden their bike to Kinko's to self-publish a zine can come up with a decent title, but a bunch of professional writers (or in this case, music critics) can't? How much can we trust the Voice]'s critical sensibility if they can read that cringeworthy title every year and no red lights go off?