I am not dying, but I've spent the last 6 months being treated for breast cancer, and considering the possibility that it may kill me before I can buy my first house, or have kids, or get tenure. I've been told repeatedly to "fight!"--an exhortation that I particularly hate. My path is acceptance and working with my reality. I want to treat my disease, but I don't want to live my life as a battle or to hate anything in my body.

I finally told everyone in my life that saying "fight!" to me was just not working. I told them why. Guess what? Some respected my wishes, and others largely stopped saying anything to me.

It's a cliche, but true: when it comes to these life and death matters, you find out who your true friends are. It is painful to give up on anyone you love, but in the end I felt I needed the people with enough faith, and enough courage of their own, to walk through my reality with me, and not insist that I join theirs.

...about any civic declaration intended to pre-empt "otherness" from taking over. But then again, it drives me crazy when people move into houses next to golf courses, then complain about the flying balls and the carts driving past the backyard. You knew the golf course was there before you moved in, and you made a decision to live by it.

Perhaps it is helpful to let people know about the metaphoric/identity golf course in their new community, so they can make an informed, deliberate decision about whether to join. Perhaps that's better than a lot of later battles over implicit, unspoken, perhaps unconscious differences in how we construe ourselves and our communities.

If a US town wrote a declaration supporting the blocking of gym windows, saying that women shouldn't be so arrogant as to think they can read or talk to men, and expecting townsfolk to go to church regularly, at least I'd know to stay away.

I tend to value the open-dialogue feeling that Salon's comments provide. It's like getting a backstage pass to a rock concert--the chance for your words to get straight to the author, and maybe even elicit a direct response. The act of reading becomes personal, relational, and intimate--one of my most surprising discoveries in the new world of the web.

I really enjoy Broadsheet, and I enjoy reading opinions that differ from mine. When the authors' interpretations seem wrong-headed, I get a lot out of that--having to mull over my own arguments (especially if I'm posting a comment!) to frame a response that holds up to the exchange.

But I've begun to feel like the attacks are changing the nature of the original writing. Far too often, I can hear an author's voice being muffled by her own caution. She is anticipating the attacks, the vitriol of those who will inevitably accuse her of being one-sided. She may want to assert her own iconoclastic view, but she hesitates. She softens. And then the writing, like so much in our eager-to-attack modern world, trudges to the boring middle where there are no positions and no challenges for anyone.

And of course, the flamers are still not dissuaded, and still throw their bombs, and next time the authors get more cautious yet.

In politics, democracy still means living by laws and agreeing to be ruled by a few. I think, reluctantly, that web discourse may have to evolve in that way, too.

I can probably live without The Fix, though as someone who goes FAR out of her way to avoid clicking any link with "Britney" or "Paris" in the headline, it really was a nice feature. I got to keep current enough to avoid looking blank when my friends were dishing, without having to slog through standard celebrity coverage. I hope you'll bring it back someday.

Meanwhile, please please PLEASE maintain a daily feature that aggregates all the talk-show guests (adding Bill Maher, if you really want my love). That was a fabulous service that I've never seen anywhere else.

Oh please please PLEASE don't contribute to this. I'm dying for Friday to arrive, but that's part of the fun. And we don't need more people out there with spoilers. Who knows what damage you've already done, but PLEASE take this down. You're not cool for posting it--Salon is usually cool for playing the game *better* than others.

I agree that you didn't do a lot *directly* or *personally*, but that really dodges your real responsibility. The threat of spoilers does not only come from my choice (in this case, choice NOT) to go look at the material myself. It also comes from other people's desire--oblivious or malicious--to go look and then tell me what happens when I am not prepared and don't expect it. That's why I said you may already have done damage.

The "change the channel" argument works with TV censorship. It really doesn't work in a commons dilemma, which is what we have here. I can make all the spoiler-free choices I want, but I'm at the mercy of those who choose otherwise. Reporting news is different from enabling mischief.

Surely it would be a nice message back to the anti-choice fringe in the Missouri legislature if this move was met by thousands or millions of Americans stepping up to defend choice. If we made it clear, within a few weeks, that Planned Parenthood-Columbia could comply with that law, then perhaps it would signal that "they" can't eviscerate choice through faux-protective roadblocks.

Got the info to share, or do we just contact PP ourselves?