The only medical help that LW needs right now is the kind that involves Prozac. Her friends are probably telling her to fight, because she's not actually dying, and they believe she's got a shot at survival. Or they don't have the guts to slap her upside the head and say, "Hey! You're not dying!", so they try the whole "You've got to fight!" talk instead.

I'm diabetic. It sucks. It does make you feel sick (although she begins the letter by claiming to be vivacious - ???) and it does make you feel tired. And if you're a brittle diabetic, it sucks even worse. You probably have to wear an insulin pump, and you have to carry candies with you, and you have to check your blood sugar every hour.

But it won't kill you unless you either allow yourself to fall too far on one side or another of the hyper/hypoglycemia side of things. Like another reader mentioned, there is no talk of diabetic complications. Are LW's feet falling off? Is she going blind? No. She just wants to get some kind of grand send-off, so she began announcing to people that she was dying.

And she's not. She has a tumor that will be removed and she'll go back to being a diabetic with supportive friends who are probably used to her dramatic announcements and not entirely convinced that a VIVACIOUS woman in her late 20s is going to up and die all of a sudden.

No, I actually found that hysterically funny. I'm not to the point where I'm ready to have kids, but that almost made me want to run out and reproduce. Kids DO say the darndest things.

Yes, it's gross. What's more repulsive is this morbid and juvenile fascination the media seems to have with this story - parsing out and repeating reading every single teeny detail about it. The messages, the innuendos. It reminds me of the disgusting obsession with Lewinsky - not just that it happened, but that we ever had to hear about the cigar, that hours were devoted to something as stupid as an extramarital affair. Sex is fun, messy, and occasionally illicit. In this case, it was illegal (although the minor thing really is arbitrary - how minor is 17?), and Foley is being punished. That doesn't mean that we have to beat it to death, reveling in all the SMSing and proposed encounters. Who's more perverted now? The Congressman who sent the messages, or the media, who salivate openly at analyzing every detail of the relationship? God, people, show some fucking dignity.

And as Thom Hartmann pointed out today, the media sensation surrounding this really obscures recent further revelations about the Bush administrations apparently deliberate attempts to ignore warnings about 9/11.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/washington/03ricecnd.html?hp&ex=1159848000&en=5de194832d554019&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Shrieking hysterically about unethical and/or illegal sexual conduct among politicians gets you so far, and then it gets old and annoying. In this case, it will backfire. Now, if it had been someone higher up, someone in the administration, then perhaps it would be a "gift from God" that could be exploited in order to illustrate just what fucked up hypocrites the Republicans are.

But did you notice, say, how the idea of impeaching Bush isn't gaining much of a foothold in this country? I'd argue that it has partly to do with the fact that the majority of American voters are a bunch of mouth-breathers and don't REALIZE that Bush has done so many horribly illegal things, but I wouldn't discount the notion that Americans are weary of impeachment in general. God, didn't we just get finished with that? The same goes for the whole "sexual scandal on the Hill" - the Republicans made damn sure that the entire country is SO TIRED of hearing about these topics that they can hardly be broached.

And I think they did it on purpose. Were they really outraged over Clinton's Oval Office antics? No. Did he need to be impeached? No. But they did it, and they did it with gusto, and they dragged it out forever, to make sure that no one would want to put the country through a scandal of a similar nature for a good, long time. If there is one thing the Republicans are excellent at, it's turning any argument on its head, regardless of where they technically stand on an issue. Trust me, when you've got Ann Coulter on your side, you're not going to lose any points because of this.

Dems freak out over dirty old Foley: "See? Democrats hate gays. This is why we didn't make a big deal out of it"

Dems don't freak out over Foley: "See? Democrats support gay pedophiles."

And I agree - George Allen is totally relaxing now.

I used to despise Rachel Ray, but after giving the rest of the Food Network a spin, I find her bubbly cheerleader schtick highly preferrable to the other starlets and preening chefs (ESPECIALLY Lawson - she's quite a dish, but yeesh, do I ever get tired of watching her suck sauces off of her fingers).

In a post-ironic world, Rachel Ray is sincere, if overly chirpy. I'll take that over Bourdain's snobbery and odd politickiness (at least Ray doesn't feel the need to voice her opinion on things like immigration) any day.