>...we'd best understand the powerful anti-elitist sentiments here and stop talking down to the huge numbers of people who naturally distrust us because they perceive that we think we know better than they do what's good for them.<

Forget that mess, Robert. Those folks have brought this country to the brink of disaster by letting their inferiority complexes run crazy and wanting to bully the "elites" into silence. They've been acting like kids and we've been cowed by their "you think you're better than us" attitude for far too long. They don't _want_ to listen, because then they would have to change and they would sooner admit they were wrong as hell than do that. In short, they are going to see liberals as patronizing or worse because they want to, and there is no trying to talk to them.

>I'm not going to bother getting into the details about this incident. I have never had a racist bone in my body, was never raised around that kind of belief, and have many black friends and co-workers.<

S'yeah, right. Whenever someone claims that they have a lot of black friends, you can bet some racist-in-denial nonsense is sure to follow.

>However, how this was handled by the black community, led by the hypocrites Sharpton and Jackson, has been an overwhelming setback in the progress that has been made in integrating society.<

Um, exactly how _should_ "the black community" have handled this? Ignored it; let Imus get away with it; and showed the other knuckleheads like him that they can insult black folks and anyone else with impunity? Do you realize that this kind of behavior doesn't stop if you ignore it--it keeps getting worse. I just _love_ how folks love to counsel black people into shutting up and taking abuse. Guess so long as they don't have to acknowledge the real guilty party here, they can stay safe in their patronizing condescension.

I've been a hard-core 24 fan from the start, but five episodes into this season I started losing interest. S6 is like S1 and S3 mashed together and retreaded to much less effect. It was only a matter of time, really--there was no way the show could maintain that level of twistiness and constant major catastrophe (shoot, everyone on 24 seems to have totally overlooked the fact that half the Midwest got blowed up back in S4 or so. How is it folks are traveling around the country with seemingly no problem?) Proof positive that the British have the right idea when it comes to some types of TV material--make 'em a limited-run, three-seasons-then-out deal.

...how Cho turned in enough accepted work and had enough of an undisturbed academic career to become a senior. It sounds like he spent most of his time on the outs with those in his major, and at the least one would figure he'd have missed a year or two or been held back.

>I am sorry for the productive lives cut short (IMHO) by this idiot who lost his mind and probably never got laid. (Another reason prostitution should not only be legal, but a respected profession).<

Please--this guy hated women. Any guy who would look into a woman-he-doesn't-really-know eyes and "see promiscuity" has major problems with the opposite gender. (And let's not even get into the stalking thing.) Do you think having sex would have mitigated his hatred--or his emotional problems? Men as mentally-ill and puritanical as this regard any woman who would sleep with them as whores, in any case. They hate themselves (and/or the females who abused them) and proceed to project that onto women.

>Something strange and weird and perhaps (?) dishonest on Giovanni's part. Something not said about youth and rage that could have been said, and wasn't.<

Are you saying that Giovanni's poems prove that she once had the same rage and that somehow made her incapable of dealing with Cho? Please--that's as stupid as the argument that what Imus said wasn't so bad because rappers call women hos all the time. So what if she did feel (justified) rage and wrote about it? The point is, she didn't go out and kill anyone.

>It might have. Lots of resentful young men from puritanical backgrounds aren't really committed to the puritanical belief systems they inherit enough that they won't give them up if they start being able to live a successful alternative.<

But Cho was stalking women and regarding them in madonna/whore terms. He couldn't see them as real people or engage them as such--and was hostile to them. That's as good a working definition of misogyny as it gets, and guys operating from that mode can only see sex as a power play, a domination/submission game...not as fun or tender or relaxing.

Why does _anyone_ need an assault weapon? What are the odds that the Crips or Al-Queda is going to roll up on any American gunowner's house and start a firefight? One could argue that if Cho had been limited to owning a hunting rifle, he would have killed less people--and been more vulnerable to being taken down.

I haven't seen any woman this obsessed with putting other women down since high school. Honestly, she has major problems with women who aren't the kind of trophy doll-wife she seems to think women married to successful men should be. Whatsamatter, Maureen--the men who want that kind of woman don't want you, so you feel good bashing achieving women like yourself?

>The article skips and jumps around the main point - flying got expensive, and the vast majority of Americans can't afford expensive things anymore.<

That is one of the most irritating things about the NYT. For every good article they do on the effects of poverty, they have at least two that 1) know nothing about real-world finances; 2) invariably blame women who won't stay home instead of highlighting larger economic problems. The Style section is usually the worst offender, but those Metro/back-paper pieces are good for this crap too.