Thanks, Robin.

I'm not being argumentative or trying to start a flame war; I just want to offer a respectful differing opinion, and maybe hear more about why people like the show so much. I keep tuning in and wanting to like it, because nearly everything about the show's profile appeals to me: long, literate, inquisitive, in-depth stories about everyday people; the emphasis on our commonalities and hidden strengths rather than the humiliations and empty competition we get elsewhere. This is what I normally enjoy, and I'm stuck on most of NPR's programming. Yet TAL continually turns me off. It begins with Ira Glass' voice--his faux-profound and self-satisfied inflections really bother me, and, more importantly, he speaks too rapidly and he mumbles, so that much of what he says is nearly incomprehensible. But even when I get past that, I find the stories generally tedious and unfulfilling when I expect them to be involving and illluminating. I'm reminded of that old SNL skit "Delicious Dish," a parody of just how boring public radio programs can sometimes be.

Does anyone else feel that the show has the right goal but just misses the mark? Oh, well, I'll keep tuning in now and then to see if I can pick up on what so many other people appreciate about it, and I'd like to see if it works on TV, but not enough to pay for Showtime. In the end, I guess there's no accounting for taste.

The #8 vs.9 opening round games, filled by all those middling teams from the big conferences, are some of the most competitive and thrilling games of the tourney, year in and year out. And you want to throw weaker teams in there just in the hope of getting a big upset, which has happened (as you cited them) four times in the last eleven seasons? The Cleveland States (oh, I remember that well) and the George Masons are exciting and they get a lot of publicity, but I sure don't want to sacrifice those nail-biting games that make the first weekend of the tournament so electrifying. King, watch all those middle-of-the-bracket games this weekend and see if they don't get you jumping out of your seat, and then come back and tell us again about that "distinctive whiff of Alpo."

Wes said: "If you replaced the current 13-16 seeds with the bubble teams from the major conferences that don't make it in, the number one and two seeds would be in much, much higher jeopardy." Quite right. It seems that what's causing the problem that KK's talking about is the fact that all conference winners get an automatic bid to the big tourney, not simply the fact that the conference tourneys exist.

I've mentioned this before, but this happens in every (I think) major team sport--that conferences, divisions, etc. determine who gets to the playoffs, yet they're based only on random geography or some other affiliation. They affect the strength of a team's schedule, of course, but that could be taken into account without having automatic playoff bids for the conference winners. If NCAA hoops simply tried to pick the best 64 teams in the country for the tournament (even though that would be controversial), we'd have a more competitive tournament, more first round upsets, and a lot less coasting for the top seeds.

I'm not saying this is necessarily better, because the current system is more inclusive and can be really exciting for fans of small-conference teams, and it may even be more fun overall. But if we're talking about getting the most out of the tournament, it should be noted that there's already been a tradeoff.

The reviewer says "the trouble with [Baumgardner's] feminist argument is that it relies too heavily on gender stereotypes." Wow, is that ever an understatement. This seems true about everything Baumgardner has to share with us.

Also, regarding doubts about whether a person can really be bisexual, a gay friend of mine made a wise observation. Concluding that bisexuality is unnatural because it's foreign to your own experience and it can easily be explained away is really the same argument made by extreme conservatives trying to stamp out homosexuality.

"George W. Bush may have been born on Jupiter, and he's really a closet liberal! Hillary Clinton is suggestive of Justin Timberlake in a few seconds of a performance I once saw on TV! Anna Nicole Smith was a genius at positioning her pinky fingers for photographers, even though the mainstream media hated her for it!"

Look, all you Paglia fans, I just said things that are unorthodox, contrarian, provocative, and even upsetting! Does that mean that if you don't want to hear them (and pay for them), you're just closed-minded and unwilling to hear opposing points of view?

No, it may just mean that these things are stupid, meritless, incredibly shallow and provocative just for the sake of making noise. Just like Paglia's column.

So many of Paglia's defenders refer to her brilliant insights, but where the hell is this brilliance? Where are the insights you relish so much? Find me one, anywhere in this insipid column of hers.

Salon, I'd love it if you gave me someone to challenge my views. But I'd kinda like them to show some reason and depth, too. Is that too much to ask?

Good point about capability. My objection is that capability isn't an issue here. It's Mahnken's word, which I think he uses dishonestly, or at least mistakenly. Who ever said that Manning was "incapable" of winning a big game? Sportswriters said that he's not a good clutch player, or that he's not a good big-game quarterback, and his record showed that they were right. The fact that he may have just become a good clutch player doesn't mean that he's been one all along, and it doesn't mean that those sportswriters were wrong before. As someone just said, athletes can get better.