Homophobia comes in all shapes and sizes, but I am most irked by the strand typified by people like this letter writer and "fag hags," as the kids call them.

If you feel the need to constantly bring up the sexuality of your close, close friend, something's wrong. You're clearly not seeing your chum as a fleshed-out human being. You've been slumming and, even worse, you're neutering your friends in order to make them palatable to you. How you explain it, their sexuality actually disgusts you.

Sadly, there are far too many gay men happy to jump into these kinds of friendships. What role do the gay friends play in this kind of relationship? I see Kathy Griffin with her "gays" on TV, and these gay sidekicks all over the place just thrilled to play part of the harmless, funny Queer Eye Guy, a symbol of how "down" the heterosexual cohort is. Well, I like to think we deserve better.

Harriet Miers is what tipped them all off? Even AFTER her nomination, he was so quick to scream "HURTING THE TROOPS!" to any critical thinker on his stupid show. Well, I guess now the tide is turning and he needs to widen his appeal. Well, the body count is way too high as far as I'm concerned.

I'd like to thank your snarky ass for pointing me to the most magical 3 and a half minutes ever.

Every time I tell somebody I really don't care for Oprah

a) I'm a little afraid beforehand

and

b) Afterwards, I feel like I'm scrambling to defend myself against being labeled a horrible person who hates strong black women who do charitable work.

I don't know that much about The Secret, but I did catch some of Oprah After the Show that was recorded after one of the episodes you discuss in your article. And I was so horrified by it that I recorded it and rewatched it with my boyfriend.

Oprah and her panel were ganging up on a single woman in the audience, telling her she was putting desperation into the universe and she needed to thank the universe for being single. "I do! Right, I do?" she asked her friend who came with her.

My boyfriend summed up the whole scene in a lovely way: Here's Oprah surrounding herself with really simple know-it-alls who spew catchphrases and she is THRILLED to actually grasp what they're talking about and delighted to be sitting as part of their little panel.

It's disturbing: People convinced they have it all figured out telling other people how to live.

Here's how I see it: We WANT our kids to grow up sensitive. If a little girl is called a pig by her dad and it doesn't hurt, well that makes a sad situation even sadder. The answer isn't calling her a pig until she realizes Daddy's just a hothead.

It's up to us as adults to realize that kids can be dicks and then address those dickish behaviors without shaming them.

But don't worry. Even without being called names by adults (those are the names that stick with you way after childhood somehow), there are still millions of other ways that kids can grow up feeling shitty about themselves.

I was in the "I did it" camp, and I don't think it's an accident that many of us were. I feel like one of the major themes of the episode was Tony's unconscious need to confess. Even after his "I've murdered friends before" dream, after which he awoke worried that he'd said it aloud in bed with Carmella, he went into therapy with a watered-down version of that same confession.

He's murdered friends before, but then there was at least someone in his crew in who knew. This act trumped those by a mile. There was not one person he could tell who wouldn't see the act for being exactly as monstrous as it was.

That's why I think his trip on peyote provided him with something else: Remember his fixation on Kelly breast feeding her and Christopher's baby? It reminded me of the hallucination Tony had at the end of season one in which he happened upon an Italian mother nursing her baby. I think his trip provided him with a small moment of symbiosis while his world fell apart around him.

I think Tony may have said too much to Melfi, regarding Adriana's death, something like, "Girlfriends, wives-they get in the way. I don't have to tell you that." Then he said, "I took care of it."

Since the very first episode, Melfi and Tony have had an agreement regarding Tony's speaking about specific crimes. I think her needing to turn him in would be an excellent way of the entire story coming full circle.

Thank goodness Dennis Kucinich has not become so cynical as to shrug off the many devastating crimes of the Bush administration. And we all know that the media help decide which news stories become important. Even if his efforts come to naught, I find some comfort in knowing that someone expected enough from the office of the president to hold this administration accountable.

Is THAT funny?