...Fay Weldon's books are all about the miserable fates women suffer when they give in, suck it up, and make the damm coffee. She made her name writing feminist novels that are college required reading, so for her to spout crap like this means she either didn't mean anything she wrote for the past twenty years or so, she's given up completely, or has done a David Horowitz out of pure cussedness. In short, yeah, it is important to know that a seminal novelist like herself is opining 360 degrees from the way she used to. That is, unless you are a total defeatist like Laurel or a closed-minded idiot like other posters that I won't waste time mentioning. :)

LW, friend has got you in a no-win situation. If you praise what little there is to be praised, she doesn't believe you; if you said it sucked, she'd go ballistic. (And, as others here have noted, she doesn't really want honest feedback--nor can she handle it.) So, just say you don't think you are objective enough to judge her work and urge her to find a writer's group or objective third party. I'm curious, though--if she's this immature and demanding, why are you friends with her at all?

...without DSL service because ATT/Covad took that long to deactivate my service and release the line so my new ISP provider (Verizon) could set up shop. The reason I switched from ATT to Verizon? Every four months, we couldn't connect into ATT's servers because the latter had been "reconfigured." That meant hours with tech support reconfiguring our main computer and the entire house network's computers. And the reasons we were given for the servers going down were as goofy ("power outage in your area" when the power had not gone out locally) as they were demonstrably false ("maybe you need to rewire your house because the wiring is too old to support wireless.")

The past three-weeks-minus-service meant I missed work deadlines and vital project information--unless I camped out at the local library or Panera's. So, in short, there is no product, no service, no _anything_ ATT could offer me to make me ever go back to being a customer of theirs. The only time I will ever get an IPhone is if Verizon picks them up...and from the sound of this article, an IPhone sounds like bad news even if you have a good network.

Is Lind seriously suggesting that poor Southern whites were in as bad or worse shape status-wise as Southern blacks? Yeah, I guess that's why the vast majority of lynchings were committed by poor whites because they felt so "exploited."

...to wear wet teabags on their heads anyway? As a "symbol de revolution," it is kinda lacking in elegance, not to mention convenience, no?

...is watching the clock inevitably tick down on white-male privilege--and see just how utterly unprepared those complacent, condescending guys were to lose it all. ;)

...was that of a Della Femina-era Mad Man. He had a helluva library--though I had no idea at the time that his well-worn FROM THOSE WONDERFUL FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU PEARL HARBOR copy was a virtual operations manual. :) And, yep, he was one live-wire gregarious dude...and, yep, he more often than not came home from parties bombed. :) Good thing I lived just up the street so he didn't put half the neighborhood at risk driving me home. I should have insisted on walking, but 2 a.m. was a bit late for a stroll...:).

I _did_ read all the letters in this thread. :) Unfortunately, your arguments are still weak (and, as other posters have noted, untrue.) Guys like you simply don't want to let go of the blame game and sense of entitlement--that there is something wrong with women who don't want men-who-don't-like-women instead of something wrong with you. Again, women-with-sense (and those really worth knowing) can tell when men are playing nice instead of truly being nice. And if a man has to play nice, he's not really nice, is he?

...over anything Hughes made--and that includes THE BREAKFAST CLUB, which was the best thing he ever did. The reason why his stuff is ultimately disposable is because he glorified the anti-intellectual, yuppie-uber-alles, whites-are-the-only-folks-who-matter ethos that made the 80s so shallow and empty--and made his movies equally vacuous. The above movies didn't play that game--and didn't worshipfully reduce the world to one (mostly-wealthy) corner of Chicago. RB showed the nasty underbelly of Reagan-land suburbia, teens trained to achieve like they were pit bulls, and the "fuck you--I got mine" that underlay all of Hughes' peppy-white-teens-only-striving. PUTV had a hero that was more hard-edged than he was cutely-rebellious--and who could easily have gone out and shot up his stifling complacent 'burb if he hadn't found some sense of worthiness and escape in radio. And REAL GENIUS--gee, kids who live to learn, research, and invent; kids who have discernible personalities instead of ones defined by high-school clique roles. Wow, how did that real-life vision ever get through? :)

The fact that Hughes' take was so shallow explains why his movies eventually became a case of diminishing returns instead of an artistic basis he could build on and go into greater dramatic depth with as his career progressed. And his prolific-ness sure didn't help. If he wasn't turning a movie every year, there were a bunch of other folks working that same turf so it seemed like "Hugheslandia" was in every other movie at any given point. Thank God HEATHERS, the 90's--and Spike Lee came along. :)

RISKY BUSINESS, which showed the nasty underbelly of Reagan-land suburbia and peppy white-teens-only striving. PUMP UP THE VOLUME, whose characters are far more transgressive and interesting than Bender could ever dream. And both of the above descriptions go double for HEATHERS.