I tuned in for what I thought was a brief moment, because Jon Stewart was pushed back a half hour for some roast or other on Comedy Central; I figured the spelling bee was as good a way as any to kill a half hour.

I learned an important lesson, though. I discovered I'm a total nerd. So is my husband. We couldn't tear ourselves away. We fought over which one of us had to get up and go into the kitchen to get the snacks. By the end, I was sobbing -- I was sobbing at many other points, but I was emotionally exhausted by the end.

I think I counted three or four words, total, that I knew. Most of those I knew because they were musical terms: passacaglia and ecossaise come to mind.

These kids, every last one, not just the finalists but all of them, were flat-out amazing.

I'd like to see some statistics on the explosive growth of the advice industry. If you wonder why so many parents "obsess" over whether they're raising their kids correctly, step back and look at how much criticism they're subjected to.

And, while we're on it, let's not declare anything a "trend" merely because someone with a column in the NY Times has noticed it for the first time. If a New York Times columnist were to spend a week working as a cashier in a 7-11, we'd all be reading about the new trend called shoplifting. If they spend a week working as a bartender, we'd be reading about the new trend called drinking. Example: the "trend" of teenagers hugging? Isn't a trend.

There never was a trend of "helicopter parenting"; that was merely the insult-du-jour. There were never any statistics showing modern-day parents were somehow more interfering than, say, parents two or three generations back. Tell me that Shirley Temple's mother wasn't a "helicopter parent".

So maybe the "trend" we're seeing is an explosion in the industry that critiques parents and undermines their good judgment and confidence.

One more thing: what's with all the projecting and speculating over music lessons? Why the snark? For the record, I come from a family of musicians going back three generations. My parents weren't obsessive, hand-wringing helicopter parents, nor were my grandparents. I don't get why I am being judged differently, just for passing along a family tradition to my daughter. I thought we were all raising spoiled, lazy kids -- but when I show up at the orchestra rehearsals early every Saturday morning, I see wonderful, smart, engaged, hardworking kids. Remind me again why this makes me a bad parent.

Hang on, let me run and mark this day down on my calendar: Today I found myself in agreement with Justice Roberts.

There. If this could happen, maybe next pigs might finally fly, or the devil coule be spotted wearing ice skates. Who knows?

It's so refreshing to read this:

The torture tactics Bush ordered are criminal no matter how many memos John Yoo wrote saying they weren't.

I didn't see this program, but I'm curious as to how many of the fathers were profiled (you mention only one). I know the law varies from state to state, but as far as I'm aware, although the choice to carry a pregnancy to term belongs to the woman, the moment that baby is born, the father (whether he's a boy or a man) has as many rights as the mother -- and the mother has as many responsibilities as the father. That being the case, given all the coverage of how the adoption decision affects the girls, is anybody asking about their partners?

I'm not inviting a lot of anti-feminists to chime in on how biased the system is against men, by the way. That one issue gets far more coverage than is warranted; the laws are typically written to give fathers equal say in anything except the abortion decision. We saw Juno largely handle all the decisions on her own, in the movie. We saw her decide to carry her pregnancy to term -- and we also saw her make the decision to place it for adoption. But, in reality, Juno would not have been able to place her baby for adoption without Bleeker's consent, and I didn't see anything in that plotline that had him signing his parental rights away. In the real world, he had the right to refuse. He had the right to raise that child. He, too, had a decision to make.

My question is, why not also ask these teenage boys how they felt about the adoption decision, seeing as how their consent is involved? Is it only traumatic for girls? How do they handle this? Do we have stories of grown men, in their 40's and 50's, being tormented by the memory of babies they relinquished?