Just to clear the air, and confirm what Mr. Anderson says, yes, I am a minor-league writer. I don't mind that status. If I prove to be any good, I'll rise. If not, well, I'll keep trying. But I don't believe in trying to climb the ladder by stepping on someone else's neck. That may be naive, or "not the way it's done in the big leagues," but that's my way.

At the risk of sounding too much like Havrilesky, with all the first person singular references (I really don't like talking about myself, I'm not that interesting) the only reason I detest Havrilesky is that her writing is so awful. There is a tradition of condescension and contempt for the reader in criticism. It's been around a long time, but it first gained traction with former movie critic Rex Reed in the mid-to-late 1960's. Suddenly being snarky and insulting seemed to be a way to be more than "just a critic," but a celebrity.

Ever since then, wherever mass media reviews are posted, being a snob with the best insults, not only for the criticized work but for one's readers, has been a career path. Genuine enthusiasm for something, a love of the medium under the microscope, and a desire to see it grow and improve, are the last things on their mind. And Havrilesky happens to be the worst example I've run across.

The basement-dwellers in the talkback columns of "Ain't It Cool News" or "Film Threat" are nastier, but they're not paid, or given front-page space on a prestigious journal. And nobody imagines the quote machines on shows like "Entertainment Tonight" or "The Insider" are anything but media whores. But Salon is supposed to be better.

I didn't know Havrilesky's past at all. It's not surprising, but it doesn't matter. It's what she does now that matters. I sense there might be a good writer under all the guano (chicken droppings?), but unless and until she takes a bath, starts self-editing or gets help from a good editor, and figures out whether she really wants to review or not, I'll have to keep on her. It is, for me, a moral imperitive.

To summarize, I said:

Put in the guns. Put in the knives. Put in the bottles of acid to throw into the cheerleader's face. Let's make it an accurate reflection of what it is to be a kid in America, 2006.

And you said:

Accurate? Dude, if you think that bottles of acid in cheerleaders' faces is accurate, you need a reality check.

Are you going to tell me there's no such thing as rape, either? (Which should ALSO be put into "Bully." And as a person who was sexually humiliated in high school by a big, tough football player, I think boys raping boys should be put into the game as a matter of sexual fairness, too.)

Scarring, mutilating and outright killing girls and women is a very common anger response. One article suggested that, if you look at the noses of women in porn videos, you'll find that breasts are not the only place they've had plastic surgery; many have had noses broken by their "loving" boyfriends in the past.

As I said before, we're all violent bastards. By pretending that we're not, we're denying the problem and we're avoiding the solution. Banning the game is wrong, but so is prettifying the violence by not allowing murder or rape in the game.

The Japanese have a popular manga, now an anime and a live-action film called "Battle Royale," where boys and girls in a high school are made to kill each other until only one is left. Hillary Clinton would censor anything like that, and the cowards at Rockstar Games would never make it into a video game, but it's VERY popular in the anime community. It will probably break out of the high school underground market to the mainstream soon.

It will only be a pale reflection of what really goes on in high schools, which certain people like Mr. Bowen clearly know nothing about.