And perhaps they said that to me because of my years doing a Rocky Horror Live Cast. Gay nightclubs refuse to admit anyone under 21 in my state, for obvious legal reasons. Gay teens, whether they're in or out, have little recourse for gathering places. About the only place they have a chance of being home - and only if they're 18 or over - is with Doctor Frank-N-Furter.

That's pretty pathetic when you think about it. Live Cast shows mix admiration for Frank's transvestite behavior with mockery of gays. (Pretty much expected, because the whole Live Cast phenomenon began as gay camp behavior.) Some of the people I encountered, in cast or out, when they weren't camping it up or acting all "flaming" to outrage nearby straights, were willing to confess their loneliness and desperation.

I was going to say that if MTV, which has practically no viewers any more, were to run a show or two about gay and lesbian teens, it might bring their miserable channel some viewers. More than just keeping them from dying from AIDS or whatever the next big STD is, such shows might help them through an adolescence of paranoia, solitude and self-hatred. But, of course, that would be far too much to ask for.

Go interview a couple of hundred women on the street. Most of them will tell you, simply, that "feminist" equals "lesbian." The next smaller percentage of respondents will tell you that women don't need a movement. Below that will be the women that don't know what the hell you're talking about (these will tend to be younger).

So what else is new?

I didn't have any desire to take it, but everywhere I was bombarded with the lesson that LSD would make you a deranged, incoherent maniac, unable to hold a real job, keep a rational thought in your brain, or conduct a coherent conversation with another human being.

Now we have a weekday example in front of our eyes, if we still have the money for cable. Thanks, Rupert Murdoch!

Inasmuch as I was being abused and humiliated in high school by teachers, and being sexually assaulted by the school's football players (and that is honest and sad truth) those things get mixed up. If I substituted Nixon for Reagan, would that be better?

I hope that you're not denying that the 1970's were not America's worst decade in the last century. It was a time of lies and pretension, which is why Life on Mars was a crappy idea for ABC to steal for an American series. Maybe they thought that since That 70's Show lasted so unreasonably long, that it would be a success.

However, That 70's Show was not so much about the actual decade as about nutty boys, slutty girls and pissed-off parents. The actual 70's never touched those characters. Life on Mars was actually about the reality of the 1970's, as well as the Joseph Wambaugh fascist-cop fantasies of that time, and so it left a bad taste in the mouth.

Amity, your post contains the most common sense of anything I have read in this thread. There've been lots of Obama backstabbers, union guys claiming their cars aren't crap (even though they didn't design the cars, only build them), more Obama backstabbers, apologists for Wall Street, and, of course, Obama backstabbers. Only your post focussed on the reality of Detroit, including the fact that the UAW and its membership completely agreed with and supported the management that was firing and outsourcing them.

A close second was the person from Indiana who bemoaned that rusty, dusty state. But Indiana doesn't have an identity in manufacturing as does Michigan. The only thing I know of that used to be made in Elkhart, for instance, were brass instruments for high school band members, since that used to be a bragging point in Sears catalogs, back when they sold musical instruments. Nobody would care if nobody made band instruments any more, since high school and college marching bands destroy every bit of music they are given. Kind of like those awful SUV and pickup truck drivers who always drive like they were escaping from Boss Hogg in Hazard County.

Now, Amity...could you talk to Michael Moore? Every film he's made bemoans the state of workers and the unemployed in Michigan. Yes, they do need help and they are hurting. But the people of that state supported all the steps that wrecked the lives of their families. The UAW isn't made up of innocents at the hands of evil management; they were complicit, and they must face their responsibility as severely as must management.

I work in a "right to work state" where unions have little power. Work is so desperate that there are firings left and right, and no one has any recourse - and certainly only minimum-wage jobs, when there are any.

But unions, as far as I can see, haven't done anything about these situations. They ask members to vote, primarily for Democrats for obvious reasons. But those elected officials jump on the anti-union bandwagon as soon as the votes are counted.

Not that the union leaders are anything special. Given a situation where they are almost extinct, they seem to be going gentle into that bad night. They may complain, they may mutter.

It's been a long time since River Rouge, where union members and angry workers realized that strikes, force and fighting company goons and company-hired police was required to gain their rights. That will be required for working people to gain rights back from employers, and the current generation of workers and unions don't have the courage or the interest.