Never tolerate deliberate incompetence. Never let a hater get away with it. In brightest day, in blackest night...well, you get the idea.

As it is, your responses to me have added more commentary letters to this mediocre Havrilesky column than the column itself deserved. You sure aren't talking about her writing: it isn't worth talking about. Who are the moths and who is the lightbulb? (A high-efficiency CF bulb, may I add.)

...you can be a staff writer when Don Imus gets his new show on satellite radio. And you can probably make the call to book Mel Gibson on the show.

You wonder why I rag on you for your pretensions? Because they're obviously pretensions. If you were smarter, it would show, and you wouldn't need to expend effort to raise such a facade. Writers who are worth their salt - Peter David comes to mind - don't get elaborate to prove how smart they are. The pretenders have to.

And your defense of soul-destroying insults pretty much clinches the case against you. Imus will make perfect use of your talents; he'll have you look up elaborate synonyms for "nappy-headed ho's" in your thesaurus.

A whole lot of letters. And while browsing through them, I counted one person refusing to renew, one suggesting that this column be forwarded to Cary Tennis (the sympathetic advice columnist on Salon, heartwarming and almost never sticky) and one that says Hav is a liberal version of Rush Limbaugh.

To go through these: Salon has many good writers, with the exception of Havrilesky, and deserves financial support - and that means putting out your cash, not just skipping past the ads. While I enjoy Tennis's columns, his advice is intended for people who have taken Step One, realizing that they have a problem. That's too much for the Cappucino Queen to recognize.

And while there are similarities between Limbaugh and Havrilesky - the smugness, the cruelty, inability to own up to mistakes and ignorance - Limbaugh has never whined for attention. That need is the drive beneath Havrilesky's writing, from her incessant description of her personal life in her TV column to this article, where she openly begs for response posts.

I think it was Dan Aykroyd who did a Saturday Night Live sketch about a radio host trying to get people to call into his show, who tried being more and more offensive. I think it got to things like "I believe in drowning puppies in the bathtub, what do you think, listeners?" Looks like Havrilesky has gotten to that point. And her syncopantic supporters are cheering her on, kind of the same way that gay audiences cheered on Judy Garland's descent into drug addiction and death. They think she's just as camp and they're enjoying her struggles - like the struggles of a drowning puppy.

My TV station is running reruns of 24 late-night Sunday night. I watch it every week; I have to. Besides the torture scenes, described perfectly in Mr. Blumenthal's article, there are a few other factors worth noting.

The ticking clock in the bumpers is absolutely annoying. It's there to build a sense of urgency. And in fact, it's a parody of the "ticking clock" third act as described in numerous writing books. In the badly-written third acts, obstacles appear as if by magic to make the hero's task much harder. Compare some of these to the similar situations in the sunnier, older Mission: Impossible and you'll see how improbable they are.

The only place for ordinary civilians is as victims. In the plot of one of the years (sorry, they blur together for me, I think it's the third year) a hotel is filled with people exposed to a deadly virus that will kill them painfully. The government agents offer them suicide pills to ease their suffering. That's about the only close-up of civilians in the whole show. They aren't voters, or concerned people, or people with their own will and determination; they're terrorist fodder.

Speaking of the Impossible Missions Force, there is more techno-babble in 24 than any other contemporary series, although the various Star Trek series come close. Technology isn't something that defines and limits what you can do with science; it's just plain magic. Its laws can change at will, depending on the script requirements (read: depending on the will of God). Don't try to understand it; just pray to God to grant it.

No matter how long people have worked at CTU, the fictional counter-terrorism agency, there's always traitors aboard. Like an army of Manchurian Candidates, they turn on our heroes and kill or betray, without even turning a Queen of Hearts card. In one instance, it's the jealous wife of the President himself. Suggestion: don't trust anybody, not even people on your side.

Non-scientific, full of babble, surrounded by presumed traitors, with ticking artificial desperation; what better could describe the Bush administration?