>A lot of the biting is (according to his teacher) completely unprovoked -- he's even been bitten on the back on occasion.<

Okay, so teacher is noticing this enough to know that 1) the boy is getting bitten; 2) who did it; 3) it was unprovoked. So, why can't she intercede in some way if she knows the little girl is a biter and will do so at any opportunity? Geez, the number of people here who want to brush this off as "just a phase" or "they're just kids" explains why there are so many kids making public spaces in general miserable. Exactly when _are_ kids supposed to learn they aren't supposed to do something--after they've hurt someone?

Back, back in the day, critic Pauline Kael noted that she really resented having to go see a movie the night the second ROOTS episode aired because she knew sure as fate that said episode would be a lot better than what she had to review. I feel the same way about most flicks now--some of the best writing anywhere these days is not only on HBO or Showtime, but on network TV "meat-and-potatoes" series like COLD CASE or 24 (the first few seasons.) Hell, there are good TV shows I've yet to catch up with; and there is a ton of good old movies on "On Demand" I've never seen. So, unless a movie really gets good reviews or WOM, I can wait till it hits DVD or cable. I did go see 1408, which was very well-done and defintely worth the time. You could tell the writers/director/actors really cared about what they were doing and put effort and time into making it a good thriller instead of disposable crap.

I was expecting one of those "Gee, life was so cool when guys could be Frank and Dino and women/everyone else would take it and like it" era-worships. (The kind of head GQ, DETAILS, and MAXIM love to wallow in.) But MM is a lot smarter and more inclusive than that.

>you can't help marveling at the ruthlessness of the era. This show should be mandatory viewing for any aspiring Pussycat Doll who thinks she's not teetering on the shoulders of feminist giants in those skintight ass pants. "Gee, that unseemly, shrill feminist attitude sure came in handy back in the day, when we were all treated like lobotomized infants!"<

It should be also be required for the new crop of wifey/moos who swear up and down that marriage/kids makes them more complete and happier than when they were "selfish career women"--and who act as if their McMansion lives will stay perfect the more they act like uber wifey/moos.

>And if Draper is concealing a wife and kiddies in the 'burbs, I hope to find out how he's managed to do so while rising to the heights of Mad Ave. I thought a Sweet Wifey and 2.4 Adorable Tykes were the keys to the kingdom for execs in the 50s.<

Draper isn't concealing his wife and kids. He's playing that time-honored, still-played game of "country wife, city spice." He's got the Sweet Wifey in 'Burbs to hold down the domesticity fort and give him a respectable front--and Sexy-Career-Woman in City to get loose wit' and really talk to. Like many men of that era, he's getting to have it both ways. Though it's already looking like SCW knows the score and refuses to let him turn her into Second-Wifey--and that SWIB is gonna be realizing real soon she's the living embodiment of that awful 60's song, "Wives and Lovers" (which features the immortal advice-to-wives, "Day after day, there are girls at the office and the men will always be men, Don't stand him up, with your hair still in curlers, you may not see him again.") :)

...and Maureen Dowd.

If your boyfriend thought of you two as a couple, he wouldn't be keeping his options (wide) open. Concentrate on what he's doing, not what he's saying. That will be your answer as to what he really wants.

...could spend the rest of his career just smacking up the number of neo-con apologists who disgrace the NYT and Washington Post editorial pages. "Moderates" like Friedman, Brooks, and Broder bear a major share of blame for enabling the Bushies and making people think their insane plans were fundamentally okay.

Let me get this straight: Friedman enabled a lying, incompetent president to use lies to start a war that anyone with half an eye could see was a bad idea. Friedman still hasn't caught on Bush is hopeless and beyond reasoning with...and _we're_ the ones not seeing the facts?! As the excellent blogger driftglass notes (http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html) Friedman and his ilk don't dare face facts:

"But the simple and repulsive truth that the Bush White House is simply the most visible public extrusion of a vast cancer which has rotted away the entire GOP, most of the media, and has dangerously weakened every other public institution from the labor movement to the Democrats to the Constitution itself -- that this story has genuine Villains piled up on one side for which no equalizing “balance” is to be found on the other side -- is a truth that Captain Obvious, for all of his books and billions, cannot afford to face.

And so he prattles along, stamping his tiny feet, demanding an explanation and makeup sex from a Monster which, when it bothers to notice his existence at all, no doubt laughs itself hoarse at what a useless, clueless shit he is."

The excellent driftglass does an ongoing takedown of Friedman and his cohort-in-denial Brooks every week or so that is accurate and fact-facing than anything these two have written in the past six years.