"Bullshit. They're using the word "catastrophe". I hate when people back-peddle when pressed. I'm not. Cults may be a controversial stance to take but I'm sticking to it."

So your objection, then, is to the idea that something bad will happen?

"I do find it somewhat interesting that patently indefensible notions such as these are unabashedly offered, in a progressive, left-leaning publication; and yet on those two issues I find barely a peep. Instead, the comments section is dominated by discourse on Global Warning."

This might be because her column was teased with specific reference to the global-warming part. In my case, I read her article specifically to find out why she was skeptical of global warming. I suspect others followed a similar path.

Thank you sir. I don't blame you for avoiding an ongoing debate. I'm going to bow out soon myself.

Personally, I think this whole thing deserved about a day or day-and-a-half in the news cycle and instead it's getting dragged out to a week. That's what bothers me about it.

The U.S. just instituted a "back-door draft" by extending all soldiers' tours of duty a full 3 months. Plenty of other crap is going on in the world that's real and involves thousands of people, money being shuffled around illegally, and so on. And we're talking about some idiot's inane locker-room-style comments as if they're important?

I agree that Don Imus is a fool. Nobody has a say over whether he should be fired except for his bosses. People can weigh in, and they certainly have, but it's his bosses' call. So there's no point in arguing, "Why can a rapper say X but Imus can't say X?" because the rapper has a different boss who gets to make his/her own decisions too.

Imus' comment wasn't an isolated incident, it's part of a continuum of dumb and sometimes bigoted statements. The man is getting older and less witty and it was going to be time to let him go anyway. I'll bet his ratings have slid -- after all, he doesn't have women taking their tops off like on the Howard Stern show.

I think misogyny and racism in rap music is a worthy subject for another time. Instead of trying to tie it in with the Don Imus spectacle, how about we discuss it later? Many in the black community have expressed their unhappiness about the role models and values in black music, so it's not like the entire black community is OK with certain words as long as they only come out of black mouths and not out of white mouths.

And just because a subculture of blacks tries to defuse the power of a racial slur by co-opting it, doesn't suddenly make it OK for everybody to use the term.

Anyway, Joan, don't think I didn't catch your little joke at the end with "Fellas, please." I know what word "fellas" is standing in for. Clever woman.