...this is a smart move on his part. Any more attempts on his part to play "America's Mayor" and get more 9/11 mileage will get torn to shreds by a ton of folks and their dern inconvenient facts. So, what's left? Play up your "law-and-order" side, which for Giuliani means kicking black folks around again.

I was wondering too why this movie was getting treated as if it were a disaster on the ALEXANDER scale. It doesn't make sense that this was bumped from spring--that would have been a perfect time for it. And when a studio throws a movie into August--particularly the end of August--it's saying it's hoping everyone is too busy catching summer's last rays to see a movie it would rather have buried.

>The bright lights who write the previews over at IMDb were long ago chattering about why "the filmmakers behind the trenchant, intellectually challenging 'American Splendor' chose this chick-lit cream puff of a book for their follow-up."<

They aren't seeing that all chick-lit is not of equal quality. For every three c-l's that are about whining/shopping/bay-bees/getting- that-may-n, there is at least one that addresses real issues and has characters that are about something. TND says a lot about class structure and what success really is about--hardly your standard c-l territory. Relatedly, Curtis Hansen did IN HER SHOES as his followup to 8 MILE, and got some of the "why is he doing this crap?" opprobium, even though IHS (book and movie) was very good.

>Tying their thinking caps even more firmly around their hollow skulls, they further mused, "If the trailer is any indication, the comedy is as broad and obvious as it comes -- think Lindsay Lohan vehicle and you're on the right track."<

No, that would have been UPTOWN GIRLS, with Brittany Murphy...;).

>Those Americans were better than the SUV-driving, mall-shopping, and (yes!) cappucino-swilling dodos in this land today.<

Yeah, they were all about women and non-whites having equal opportunities. And they were all about individuality instead of conformity--and later on forcing everyone to live up to the 50's ideal of kinder/kuche and white-bread suburbia. And any number of WWII veterans thought those "drugged-up, screwed-up" Vietnam veterans were "real" soldiers. Suurrrrre...

>And maybe if people are reminded of that, through documentaries, they might become better themselves.<

Maybe--if "The Greatest Generation" hadn't been used by Bush and "I love my authoritarian daddeh" jerks like Tim Russert to denigrate every generation since. :P Comparisons like yours are ridiculous, for people of every era face different challenges. As well, isn't one of the reasons people succeed in America is so that their kids can have it easier than they did? Then, why blame the kids for supposedly being "soft?" For all the problems kids don't have to deal with today, there are just as many more contemporary ones that they do.

>And anyone who thinks the Civil War was primarily about slavery also doesn't know what he's talking about.

It was first and foremost a fight over states rights (ignore the present context and meaning of that term).<

It was a fight over the southern states' rights' to have _slavery._ Please stop acting as if Lee and southern leaders were arguing some high-minded Constitutional principle that Yankee rabble couldn't appreciate. Slavery was the basis of their economy--and their riches--and they felt they had the right to enslave others to stay rich.

>...the question is not "Is occasional drug use wrong?" but "What is up with this girl?" It sounds like the real problem is not this one line of coke but the fear that it could be the tip of the iceberg.<

The LW sounds so fearful and controlling when it comes to personal relationships that I would bet if it wasn't drugs with this woman, it would be something else he'd be freaking over. Even if she were a Mormon virgin, he'd probably burrow around in her past to find something wrong with her. Dude, end it with your current girlfriend and get some help before you embark on any more romantic relationships. Are you going to play "security guard" with every woman you meet--or are you going to find a happy medium between that and unconditional acceptance?

>he needs to go to the physics lab and find some homely-looking lab tech girl to date.<

Because as we all know, "homely-looking" girls will put up with any crap just to have a may-n. :P If LW tries that approach, I feel sorry for him. I can't think of a female science-type of my acquaintance who would put up with his craziness.

...is the frivolous, high-maintenance, good-looking bitch who isn't about anything but screwing men over (and worse, yet won't give him the time of day.) So, in short, he knows very little about real women and the choices they have to make--and he cares less so long as he can vent.

...dangle the lawyer thing in front of his parents. He sounds like he needs time to figure out what he wants to do, and going into the Peace Corps will give him that time. And to keep his parents off his back, he can tell them that the PC work is medical-related somehow--he's studying infectious diseases in other countries to combat them at home, or something. By the time he's out of the PC and has figured out his life's work, he'll have some focus and confidence to deal with his parents.

>an essay by Christopher Hitchens about why women are not funny.<

Any number of women who wrote in about this lousy essay could do a good SHOUTS AND MURMURS.

Humorlessness is endemic to both genders. In fact, I'm glad when someone I meet doesn't respond to my humor--or smile much or make jokes on their own. That invariably means they are cold, uptight, snotty, or some combination of the three that I don't need to deal with on a regular basis.