I only have a layman's knowledge of psychiatry, plus two very futile experiences with shrinks; one at about age 17, including a short stay in a hospital, and another at age 30. I found both frustrating because the doctors involved could have pointed me in some direction towards discovering my problems, but preferred to milk the bank accounts of my parents, and later my own, with trying to make me feel "comfortable" as I recounted the pointless crap of my previous week.

I think less of psychiatrists than of counselors or therepists, who are willing to offer advice and suggest possible therepies to folks with standard emotional problems.

But the tendency of celebrities to use psychiatric treatment and rehab clinics as a "beard" is an old one. Peter Lawford, peripheral member of the Rat Pack and relative to the Kennedys, once went to a desert rehab center. He would take long walks out in the desert at night...where he'd meet up with a helicopter with a delivery of fresh drugs and booze. Nobody seemed to have minded it, apparently not even the clinic's staff.

If I thought psychiatry provided effective and practical solutions to emotional problems, I'd be tempted to raise money to buy therepy for that gay black guy who posted a violent screed a post or two before this one. Instead, I would probably send him a couple of good self-help books and tapes. I'm neither black nor gay, but my life has been full of undeserved ass-whuppings and contempt. And I've managed to get beyond it and live a life largely free of self-destructive hatred.

Actually, a more appropriate title for her column would be "Kiss My Painted Toenails, Scum, and Get Me My ****ing Scotch," but that's kind of long. What's more amazing is that someone with no sense of humor would dare to critique humor and rank it on some kind of absolute scale.

It is a freshman mistake to say "That's not funny." A sophamore would eventually learn to say "That's not funny to me." A senior would say "That's not funny very often to me." (Those are high school classes, not college, by the way.) For instance, I, too, don't find very much that's funny in The Knights of Prosperity, but every once in a while the writers or actors come up with some bit of business that actually works.

One of my few joys is watching a group of improv comedians trying to wring comedy out of audience suggestions. They aren't paid much; they work for Disney. They have the unenviable task of (a) being funny (b) for an audience of drunks (c) while still keeping close to Disney standards of decency and political correctness. They walk that tightrope seven nights a week, four or five shows a night. And sometimes they fall off. Sometimes the muse doesn't visit the club, sometimes the audience is lousy, sometimes a drunk or some catastrophic national news makes everything unfunny. Watching them work, despite all these pitfalls and problems, are profiles in courage that not even JFK's ghostwriters could match. And they succeed more often than mortal humans should be allowed.

As annoying as I find Jim Belushi on According to Jim,, I give him credit for keeping trying. He may only be walking in the big, fat footsteps of Jackie Gleason, but sometimes he surprises with some unique piece of business. And for all the episodes and even seasons that Roseanne's sitcom went off the rails, the train did arrive at a destination, and more honor and more interesting side trips than, say, The Cosby Show. Anybody who even tries to be funny deserves respect, and if it doesn't work, at the very least sympathy. But perhaps it's asking Havrilesky too much to have sympathy for anyone, especially before she gets her scotch.

Sorry, "S-S-S", but I pay for things I believe in. I believe in Salon, for its large quantity of good writing. (It's when it's bad that I start getting angry.) Likewise, I pay for bartcop.com because Bart attacks evil in an unpretentious but gleeful manner. You-know-who might take a few lessons in writing from that Oklahoma so-called primitive. I also tip for good service.

The big problem with "snark" is that it is a substitute for life, just as "cool" was. Do any of you remember where "cool" came from?

In jazz nightclubs, black musicians were given extravagant compliments by the same white people who would snub and curse them during the day. Accepting those compliments would mean validating the white people's racism. So the black musicians became indifferent to the compliments, thus invalidating the power of those compliments. Thus, "cool."

Problem was when the attitude of "cool" became popular. It became a way of insulating oneself from the world, not attacking one specific problem (racism). "Cool" became a way of not caring, period. There's a war in Vietnam? Cool. People are drowning in New Orleans? Cool.

"Snark" operates in a similar fashion. It is more active; it insulates the person from being real when that person throws out meaningless insults and feigns superiority. You don't have to admit liking anything if you're "snarky." Love is, after all, a sign of weakness. And not looking weak has become a cultural imperitive...for the weak. Glance up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for an example. He sure is "snarky," and "smirky" too.

It also makes a woman seem "assertive" if she's "snarky." For these people, Sharon Stone stabbing her sex partner to death at the point of orgasm is "assertive." So a woman can be as soulless as Ed Gein. That's progress!

"Cool" and "snark" are pretense. When pretense moves from an amusing pose to a pathological syndrome - as it does in Hollywood, Washington and Heather Havrilesky - it's no longer fun.