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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
gradysu
Published Letters: 162 Editor's Choice: 40
The Tim/Barack exchange reminds me of the old Fernwood 2Night episode, where a Jewish guy was caught speeding through Fernwood and after he was arrested, he appeared on the show, as "the speeding Jew," taking a number of viewer calls about things like Barbra Streisand's latest movie.
Yes, Tim, you know you've achieved greatness as a TV host when you're recalling great moments of Garth Gimble!
It seems to me this woman is lucky her book came out before they decided it would be a good idea to fact-check memoirs. It seems like her "perfect" trip involved a lot of fictionalizing. I read parts of it, as much as I could stand, and frankly if I rolled my eyes any more often, they would have become affixed in the back of my head.
I, like another reader, wonder how "debilitiating" her depression was if she scored a book deal and took a trip around the world. That doesn't sound like any depressed, introspective, genuinely substantial people that I know.
If I want to read a lot of truly awful, self-congratulatory crap from an overprivileged, self-obsessed bozo, I'll read Ayelet Waldman. And I avoid her like a bladder infection!!
I've often wondered why pro-choice advocates don't ask anti-choice people why they don't picket daily outside fertility clinics, which routinely discard embryos. The answer, I think, is that it would be politically unpopular and also expose the ludicrousness of their position.
Regarding the other hot-button embryo issue, stem cell research, ask them, along the same lines, why they have no problem with those embryos being tossed in the garbage but they strenuously object to them being used for research.
And why aren't miscarried fetuses routinely given full church rites and then buried? In some cases they are, but this is by no means the norm.
It would be so easy to go on the offensive, and trip these people up on their inconsistencies, instead of being constantly on the defensive.
This woman seems to lead a pretty empty existence. While she talks about liking the early, "connecting" part of a "relationship," she never seems to get to any real connection or real relationship! She seems to stay totally in her own head, observing the initial attraction, determining what she likes and doesn't like, while the guy is never really let in things. How awful it must be to just sit be a spectator on your whole life, and sit in judgment of everyone you date! And how awful for the objects (and in this case, it sounds like she actually treats them like objects) of her judgment!!
My husband and I are 45 and 46, and we are not as "hot" as we were in our 30s, but we have a great sex life because we love each other, we're totally connected, and we talk about stuff. And if one of us were to fart in bed, we'd share a joke about it!! When I see him, the room still lights up for me. Even if he's padding around in his polar-bear pajama pants, with a little paunch underneath. And when I overindulge and need to lose a few pounds, and grousingly go on a diet, he protests and says, "I love your body!"
Great sex is about more than "etiquette" or looking perfect. It's about love, connection, acceptance, and humor!
I find it really telling that more than 150 people have responded to this story. To me that shows what a visceral reaction people have to someone being a really crappy "friend."
You can argue till the next blizzard whether this woman had the moral/ethical/logical/legal "right" to turn her friend away in a snowstorm/blackout, whether the friend hd other people to turn to, and on and on. But the fact is, when all the rationalizations are spewed, she was just WRONG. Flat-out wrong. A self-absorbed bitch. Period. There will be other Sundays she can snuggle under the covers with her boyfriend, whom, I hope, she treats with a little more kindness and respect than she did her text-messaging pal. But at some point, she'll realize that however many Sundays there are, she has no friends left. Except people as shallow as she is, I guess.
Bush completely ignored the warnings about Katrina, and earlier, had refused to fund the reinforcement of the levees even though he was warned they were vulnerable long before the hurricane. He completely botched the preparation and the aftermath. And he GOT US INTO Iraq!! How are either of these events "external" to him? Even that premise is unbelievably forgiving.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
