dear ed--

it is sad that you weren't with me last year when i finished my first marathon at the age of 52. i wasn't puking (sorry to disappoint) but i did shed a small tear because it was the hardest thing i've done since i quit smoking twenty years ago. too bad you don't get that. i don't particularly care if Americans are not the fastest people in the world. i care that we are not narrow-minded and petulant, ed.

Gee, Rebecca, you are just as dangerous as Matthews and the other dogs. You, along with many of the same people you trounce in this article, are now believing that Clinton simply got the pity vote. You didn't dare think that when people in New Hampshire walked alone into the voting booth, perhaps they voted for their candidate of choice. And a big P.S.: equating the amazing road that Gloria Steinem and others paved for women to the warm, Stuart Smiley sandbox for children created by That Girl, is an insult to both.

sadly, the readers of salon are about as narrow a sample as exists in the country, you might as well go to a coal mine to ask about clean energy alternatives being good for the country or to northampton MA, to ask if lesbians are cool. regardless of what people on this list think about their tendency to vote for or against a woman president based on gender, they do not represent the country. and sadly, as you noted in your article, sexism can often be unconscious. so what we have here is a bunch of guys--and women--who might engage only in unconscious sexism. what you have elsewhere in the country is not-so-unconscious. and if barack obama were a woman, believe me, mccain would already be picking out curtains for the oval office. ....um, wait, no, he wouldn't, he would let [make] cindy do it.